Showing titles in Sociology of Sports

John Schulian, a much-honored sportswriter for nearly forty years, takes us back to a time when our greatest athletes stood before us as human beings, not remote gods. In this compelling collection, Schulian paints prose portraits to remind fans of what today's cloistered stars won't share with them. The result is an audiobook guaranteed to stir memories for the generation that was - and to leave subsequent generations wishing they had it so good.

Pedro Martinez. Sammy Sosa. Manny Ramirez By 2000, Dominican baseball players were in every Major League clubhouse, and regularly winning every baseball award. In 2002, Omar Minaya became the first Dominican general manager of a Major League team. But how did this codependent relationship between MLB and Dominican talent arise and thrive?

The typical female sports fan remains very different from her male counterparts. In their insightful and engaging book, Sportista, Andrei S. Markovits and Emily Albertson examine the significant ways many women have become fully conversant with sports - acquiring a knowledge of and passion for them as a way of forging identities that until recently were quite alien to women.

How Football Explains America is a fascinating, first-of-its-kind journey through the making of America's most complex, intriguing, and popular game. ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio explores just how crucial football is to understanding the American psyche. Paolantonio tackles varying American themes from Manifest Destiny to “fourth and one” as he goes deep in order to answer the age-old question: Why does America love football so much?

Becoming a True Champion: Achieving Athletic Excellence from the Inside Out fills a critical need by speaking in a frank and direct voice directly to today's aspiring athletes about crucial, controversial issues and the personal choices they face. At the same time the audiobook presents them with the antidote to these negative influences - the fundamental values, attitudes and concepts, both mental and practical, that support and lead to athletic excellence.

Addressing both collegiate and professional sports, the updated edition of Fair Play explores the ethical presuppositions of competitive athletics and their connection both to ethical theory and to concrete moral dilemmas that arise in actual athletic competition. A major new section in chapter four examines the ethics of genetically enhancing athletic abilities. Other new material covers the analysis of sports and games according to influential philosopher Bernard Suits; the morality of cheating and the ethics of strategic fouling; and more.

A young man's journey through the Philippines' most unlikely obsession: Basketball. In Pacific Rims, Rafe Bartholemew, journalist, New Yorker, and veteran baller, ventures through the Philippines to investigate the country's love of basketball. From street corners where diehards fashion hoops out of old car parts to the professional league where politicians exploit team loyalties to win elections, Pacific Rims gets the story - and gets in the game.

Joe Queenan turns his attention to a weighty issue: the wide world of sports fans. "Fans Who Love Too Much" shows the plight of men who, like the author, resort to psychotherapy to deal with their addiction. "Fans Who Misbehave" attempts to deconstruct otherwise solid citizens who, once they enter a stadium, spill beer on women. True Believers

NBC's Bob Costas has anchored football, basketball, and Summer Olympics coverage for NBC and served as a baseball play-by-play man. He is an 11-time Emmy winner and an eight-time National Sportscaster of the Year. Budd Mishkin is the senior feature correspondent and sports anchor/reporter at New York 1 and the host of the weekly profile series One on 1 with Budd Mishkin.

An entertaining, anecdotal exploration of how the skills used in evaluating fantasy sports talent are one and the same with the skills we all use every day of our lives. The world of fantasy sports is no longer the purview of nerds and stat geeks. In fact, versions of the game are currently played by tens of millions of people worldwide. But while fantasy sports may have begun as a light-hearted diversion, to many of its participants winning or losing is no laughing matter.

A look at how commercialization has transformed youth sports from fun into a heavily commercialized and profitable venture. Examining the youth sports economy from many sides - the major corporations, the small entrepreneurs, the coaches, the parents, and, of course, the kids - Hyman probes the reasons for rapid changes in what gets bought and sold in this lucrative marketplace. He reveals the effects on kids and profiles the individuals and communities bucking this destructive trend of commercialization.

For those who enjoyed I Am the Secret Footballer, this new book delivers hard-hitting insights into the hidden world of professional football and footballers. In the vein of Hotel Babylon and Confessions of a GP, The Secret Player will fascinate football fans with its wealth of insider knowledge and willingness to talk, albeit anonymously, about the inner workings of the game. Based on the hugely popular 'The Player' columns in FourFourTwo magazine, the book gives a warts-and-all insight into the daily life of professional footballers.

Cards on the table - author Tim Forbes is not quite right. Want proof? How else could you explain him spending a full year of his life attending 100 uniquely different sporting events - involving 50 separate sports? Speed-dating with the entire sporting world initially revealed only painful truths, but what he ultimately learned in the most unassuming of venues had a dramatic impact on Tim’s life as a fan, a sports entrepreneur, and - however humble - an athlete.

From the beginning, ’68 was a season rocked by national tragedy and sweeping change. Opening Day was postponed and later played in the shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral. That summer, as the pennant races were heating up, the assassination of Robert Kennedy was later followed by rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But even as tensions boiled over and violence spilled into the streets, something remarkable was happening in major league ballparks across the country. Pitchers were dominating like never before, and with records falling and shut-outs mounting, many began hailing ’68 as “The Year of the Pitcher".

In an increasingly secular, fragmented, and distracted culture, nothing brings Americans together quite like sports. On Sundays in September, more families worship at the altar of the NFL than at any church. This appeal, which cuts across all demographic and ideological lines, makes sports perhaps the last unifying mass ritual of our era, with huge numbers of people all focused on the same thing at the same moment. That timeless, live quality makes sports very powerful, and very lucrative. And the media spectacle around them is only getting bigger, brighter, and noisier.

For football fans who hungrily feed on gossip and rumour, Christmas comes twice a year - once in August and again in January. These are the months when the transfer window dominates thoughts, when the prospect of a new signing or two reinvigorates the hopes and dreams of the hopelessly devoted. Nige Tassell goes behind the scenes to observe the workings of the transfer window and to examine why it continues to hold such fascination for a nation of football lovers.

As the revenues generated by big-time college sports continue to skyrocket, virtually all of the debate involves whether (and how much) student-athletes should be paid for play. Kenneth L. Shropshire and Collin D. Williams Jr., argue that "student" has to come first: the focus should be on prioritizing a meaningful education. They draw on new research to reveal that it has become increasingly difficult for college athletes to balance school and sports, much less a social life, leading to serious economic, professional, and emotional consequences for young people.  

For the past year, John U. Bacon has received unprecedented access to Jim Harbaugh’s University of Michigan football team: coaches, players, and staffers, in closed-door meetings, locker rooms, meals, and classes. Overtime captures this storied program at the crossroads, as the sport’s winningest team battles to reclaim its former glory. But what if the price of success today comes at the cost of your soul? Do you pay it, or compete without compromising?

Few people watch sport for its politics. Yet what happens on the field of play often reflects the problems in our society. Such was the case in the '80s, when black footballers emerged from the dressing room to find bananas being hurled from the stands, and racially motivated attacks and police harassment were the norm. Today, things have improved. Crowds are less hostile and stars like Anthony Joshua and Sir Mohamed Farah are among our most revered sporting heroes. But for athletes of colour, success on the field seldom converts to power away from it.

Il tifo calcistico è qualcosa di più di una storia d'amore o di una fede religiosa, è una condizione dell'essere. Si è di una squadra fin da bambini e la si ama seguendo dinamiche personalissime, fatte di consuetudini e liturgie ben precise, che rispondono a una grammatica che il non tifoso non può che ignorare. Tommaso Labate prende le mosse dalla recente vittoria dello scudetto del 2021 da parte della sua Inter per accompagnare il lettore alla scoperta di questa grammatica, attraverso un vero e proprio viaggio nell'"interismo".