Johns Hopkins University Press

Johns Hopkins University Press
The New Sport History

Author(s): Steven A. Riess
Source: Reviews in American History, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep., 1990), pp. 311-325
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
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THE NEW SPORT HISTORY
Steven A. Riess
The first major scholarly articleon American sport history was written in 1917,
followed twelve years later by John A. Krout's Annals of AmericanSport.Suc-
ceeding generations of historians neglected this subject not only because of
other important topics to research, but also intellectual snobbery, career con-
cerns, or a conviction that detailed analysis of sport would not foster new
knowledge or explain important historical questions. An upsurge in interest
began in the late 1960s as a result of the democratization of the historical pro-
fession, the rise of the New Social history, interdisciplinary influences, es-
pecially from cultural anthropology, the student revolution of the late 1960s
that called for more relevant scholarship, and the organization of the North
American Society for Sport History (1972), which created an intellectual com-
munity for historians interested in the study of sport. Initially the literature
consisted primarily of a number of monographs on baseball and several bi-
ographies of sports heroes, but in the 1980s there has been a veritable flood
of high quality sports research, raising new questions about old topics and
branching off into new areas of inquiry.1
The new scholarship is extremely wide-ranging, although little has been
done on the colonial or early national eras.2 Consequently, only the most
dominant trends will be considered here. Most researchers have emphasized
the period between 1850 and 1920, with a growing number examining the
post-World WarII era. This review examines models sport historians are em-
ploying; surveys what scholars are writing about the major American sports;
considers such major themes as class, race, ethnicity, education, fitness, the
genre of biography, and studies of recent American sport; and concludes by
proposing an agenda for future research.
Sport historians are generally very empirically-oriented, but a number of
models have been employed to try to explain the rise of organized sport. Allen
Guttmann and Melvin L. Adelman are the primary advocates of a moderni-
zation model. These Weberians state that modern sport has qualities that dif-
ferentiate it from the sport of earlier eras: secularity, equality, bureaucrati-
zation, specialization, rationalization, quantification, and record keeping.
Reviews in American History 18 (1990) 311-325 ? 1990 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
312 REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY / SEPTEMBER 1990
They propose that the modernization of sport is a product of social systems

in which a scientific, rational, and bureaucratic view of the world (i.e., the
Protestant Ethic) dominates. Adelman also demonstrates through his pro-
digious research that the rise of sport was well underway before the Civil War,
and that harness racing, thoroughbred racing, cricket, and baseball were all
modernized by 1870. Most historians appreciate the heuristic and descriptive
value of the modernization model, but find it mechanistic, leaving little room
for emotional factors; point out that modern sports can exist in societies that
are not fully modernized; and argue that a society's modernization is not a
necessary or sufficient condition for its sporting institutions to become mod-
ernized.3
Benjamin G. Rader has brought a great deal of order to the disparate
threads of American sport history by focusing on the evolution of the major
modern spectator sports from informal games. He divides American sport
history into four distinct periods-The Age of Folk Games (1607-1800); The
Rise of Organized Sports (1800-1890); The Ascendancy of Organized Sports
(1890-1950);and The Age of Televised Sports (1950-present), and argues that
this process was primarily the joint product of industrial capitalism, the ev-
olution of American society and culture (in an urban setting), and the exi-
gencies of each sport's internal requirements (organization, rules manage-
ment, finances and ethos). This standard paradigm, largely derived from the
pioneering work of John R. Betts, misses the negative influence of the in-
dustrial revolution and limits the role of the city as a site where sport evolved.4
A third approach is to employ urbanization as the central organizing con-
cept. Certain recent monographs on sport history, including those by Melvin
Adelman, Stephen Hardy, George Kirsch, and my own work, place the city
as a central factor in their narratives, as bothsite and process. These scholars
not only examine the city as the locus for the rise of sport, but also analyze
the impact of the process of urbanization upon sport as well as of sport on
urbanization. Such an analysis sees sport history as largely the product of the
constant and continuous interaction of the elements of urbanization-phys-
ical structure, social organizations, and value systems-with each other and
with sport. These elements include demographic growth, economic devel-
opment, the emergence of a positive sports creed, evolving spatial arrange-
ments, social reform, the formation of class and ethnic subcommunities, the
expansion of urban government, and the rise of political machines and crime
syndicates.5
Baseball and boxing have received far more attention than any other sports
during the 1980s. There has always been a strong historical consciousness
about the national pastime, which, Warren Goldstein reminds us in Playing
for Keeps:A Historyof EarlyBaseball(1989), has been both linear (chronological)
RIESS I The New Sport History 313
and cyclical (repetitive and emotional). Baseball is the game of nostalgia, folk
heroes, statistics, records, and the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown,
New York. It was the first sport to receive major scholarly attention, and re-
cent researchers have built on the framework established by Harold Seymour
and David Q. Voigt in their multivolume narrative histories of professional
baseball.
Baseball historians in the 1980s focused on the origins of the game, its
myths and realities, the social origins of players, fans and owners, and the
integration of the professional game. What began as a simple boys' game in
the early nineteenth century, with different versions in various localities,
evolved into a sport for middle-class young men by the mid-1840s. However,
modern baseball was actually preceded by cricket, the first American team
sport. Baseball supplanted cricket by the late 1850s because the older game
was too identified with the English, its subtleties and skill requirements were
too challenging, the game was too slow, lengthy, and not dramatic enough,
had too few shifts between offense and defense to interest casual observers,
grounds were expensive to maintain, and the sport was already fully mod-
ernized. Americanizing cricket would have made it something other than
cricket.
Baseball quickly developed all the characteristics of a modern game, in-
cluding a positive self-justifying ideology. The first players were mainly high
or low white-collar workers, but by the early 1850s they were mostly low
white-collar with about one-third skilled craftsmen. There were virtually no
semiskilled or unskilled workers playing baseball. These athletes, who be-
longed to occupational or neighborhood clubs or volunteer fire companies,
constituted, in WarrenGoldstein's terms, a ballplaying fraternity.Their goals
were to enjoy themselves with men of similar interests, develop a strong
sense of camaraderie, and gain respect for their prowess. They wore uni-
forms, which established a boundary between club members and outsiders,
and was a means of distinguishing ballplayers from less reputable sorts. In
the 1860s the emergence of championship contests, scientific play, and
greater demands for victory led to the rise of commercialism and even pro-
fessionalism. The result was the subordination of the fun element in favor of
the spirit of work. Baseball was now "played for keeps."6
Baseball'slong-term popularity was not only a product of the dynamics and
rituals of the game, but also its apparent congruence with the American value
system. I argue in my work that the principal values and goals of turn-of-the-
century middle-class America were expressed through baseball's myths, leg-
ends, and heroes. Uncritically accepted beliefs included the agrarian/rural
myth, the myth of social integration, and the myth of social democracy. These
traditional small-town bourgeois concepts helped reinforce the core society's
assumptions about their nation when it was threatened by immigration, ur-

banization, and bureaucratization. The realities of the game actually had little
in common with these myths, but the baseball creed was accepted as gospel,
and that conventional wisdom influenced the way people thought and be-
haved.7
There is controversy over the social composition of baseball crowds and the
social origins of major leaguers. Kirsch contends that in the early 1860s au-
diences became mainly middle class, a trend that continued until after World
War I because of high admission prices, lack of accessibility, and the wide-
spread ban on Sunday games. Guttman, however, argues in SportsSpectators
(1986) that the well-known presence of Irishmen and other ethnics indicates
that baseball was mainly a blue-collar game. The first professionals, according
to Adelman, were mainly artisans and the rest were low white-collar, a pat-
tern that changed around the turn of the century when the pro game became
more respectable and well-paying, and continued until the 1940s when sons
of the new immigrants made major inroads into Organized Baseball. Baseball
did not provide long-term social mobility because the primary post-baseball
occupation was a product more of social origins and education than of athletic
fame.8
Biography remains an important element of baseball historiography, and
interest has expanded beyond heroes to baseball's entrepreneurs. Jack B.
Moore's bio-bibliography of Joe DiMaggio examines the Yankee Clipper as an
ethnic hero, a model of consistency and reliability, and an example of the
American Dream. Charles C. Alexander has written a detailed biography of
Ty Cobb, but also one of John C. McGraw, the greatest manager of all time.
Peter Levine examines the life of Albert G. Spalding, one of the first great
pitchers, who became a founding father of the National League and head of
a sporting goods empire using business methods that mirrored those of the
captains of industry. Eugene Murdock's biography of Ban Johnson, founder
and first president of the American League (1900-1927), explores such issues
as its early war for recognition with the National League, Johnson's recruit-
ment of owners, the problems of securing playing sites, and labor-manage-
ment disputes.9
The racial dimension of baseball has received considerable attention at all
levels of Organized Baseball, starting with Jules Tygiel's analysis of the in-
tegration of baseball, Baseball'sGreatExperiment:JackieRobinsonand His Legacy
(1983). Tygiel argues that Robinson's breaking of the color line forced millions
of white people to confront the realities of racial prejudice. The author states
that despite the slow and painful pace of integration of the national pastime,
it was nearly as important a step in the civil rights movement as Brownv. Board
of Education,and applauds baseball as a harbinger and agent of change.10
RIESS / The New Sport History 315
The history of black baseball prior to integration relies heavily on oral his-
tory. Donn Rogosin's InvisibleMan:Lifein Baseball'sNegroLeagues(1983) dem-
onstrates that they were among the largest black businesses in the inter-war
period; leading teams became community institutions. He is particularly in-
formative about the numbers of racketeers who ran most teams, the owners'
business practices, the problems of touring teams, and the nexus between
the leagues and Latin America. Janet Bruce focuses on one of the most prom-
inent clubs, the Kansas City Monarchs. Rob Ruck's excellent and innovative
local history of black Pittsburgh shows how sandlot, amateur, and profes-
sional sports (mainly baseball) helped the city's black neighborhoods carve
out an arena for their own creativity, expression, and organization. Sports in
the black communities were originally organized by white industrialists and
social agencies to promote socialization, adjustment to urban life, and em-
ployee loyalty. The extensive black control and support that emerged in the
late 1920s declined in the 1950s with the coming of television and integrated
sport. l
Other than baseball, the only other sport that has received extensive ex-
amination is boxing, an ancient, atavistic, highly dramatic sport, operating
in an entirely different environment than baseball. The study of boxing pro-
vides historians with an excellent window to examine some of the seamier
sides of the American experience. The foremost monograph on pugilism is
Elliott Gorn's TheManly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America(1986), a
study of gender, folk history, and working-class culture. Gorn's narrative
traces the sport's development from largely Irish and English origins into a
popular sport among the subterranean working class, its association with
street gangs, and post-Civil War decline, and a resurgence in the 1880s en-
couraged by the rise of gentlemen amateur boxers, the coming of professional
promotion, and the presence of the charismatic heavyweight champion John
E. Sullivan.12
What makes Gorn's book so special is not merely his discussion of the na-
ture of combat in the ring or its development into a more modern and civilized
enterprise, but his brilliant analysis of the cultural meaning of pugilism, in-
terpreting the major events, symbols, and mentalities behind the ring. The
sport symbolically played out for its fans their deep social, cultural and eco-
nomic conflicts, frequently typified by the fates of former champions. Gorn
argues that combat sports epitomized a lower-class cultural style of raucous
play that affirmed such (lower) working-class virtues as prowess, bravery,
and physical culture, while promoting honor over money-making and valor
over comfort. The sport provided an important model for the urban coun-
terculture, inverting the Victorian value system, and posing a significant
threat to the self-restrained Victorians and their capitalistic marketplace.13
Sullivan's life is recounted in great detail in Michael T. Isenberg's JohnL.

Sullivanand His America(1988). The first national sports hero, Sullivan was
champion from 1882 to 1892, when he lost to a younger and shiftier James J.
Corbettin the first heavyweight title bout using gloves. Sullivan was the quin-
tessential shanty Irish hero who represented such working-class values as
action over thought, victory over compromise, and deed over character.
A second major biography is Randy Roberts's PapaJack:JackJohnsonand the
Eraof WhiteHopes(1983), an account based on recently declassified materials.
Heavyweight champion from 1908 to 1915, Johnson is portrayed as an ego-
tistical, self-centered womanizer, a "bad nigger" unbounded by custom,
background, or race, who wrote his own rules, and acted fearlessly in the face
of white hatred. Johnson's championship and his personal behavior threat-
ened prevailing race relations, establishing him as a danger to whites and a
hero to poor blacks. His victory over white hope and former undefeated
champion Jim Jeffries, led to race riots, the banning of his fight films, and
eventually arrest and conviction for violating the Mann Act. The symbolism
of any black, much less a dandy like Johnson, holding the most prestigious
title in pugilism was so menacing that no black could get a title bout until Joe
Louis in 1937.14
The narrative history of boxing is brought up to the present by JeffreySam-
mons in Beyondthe Ring: TheRoleof Boxingin AmericanSociety(1988). His crit-
ical study is concerned not only with the combat inside the ring, but also the
sport's social functions and its relationships with other aspects of American
society. The chronicle begins in the early twentieth century, but the core of
the book is the heavyweight division since the early 1930s. Sammons is at his
best discussing the extensive black participation, heroes like Joe Louis and
Muhammed Ali, and the medical debate over violence in the ring. There are
also valuable considerations of the relationship between prize fighting and
the law, the media, organized crime, and international relations.15
In their quest to understand the internal dynamics of sport history and how
sports institutions reflect and interact with American society, scholars have
focused on a number of thematic topics, most notably class, ethnicity, and
race, emphasizing such questions as accessibility and social functions like
community building. The elite domination of the most prestigious and ex-
pensive sports has been well documented. Nineteenth-century voluntary
sports clubs (yacht, jockey, country, and athletic clubs) were social refuges
from parvenues and indicators of their members' social status. As Donald
Mrozek in Sportand AmericanMentality, 1880-1910 (1983) and others, have
pointed out, the sons of the elite were especially active sportsmen in the late
nineteenth century when they sought physical, psychological, and sexual re-
generation through football and other strenuous activities to prove their man-
liness and honor, and to secure the future of the race.16
The development of middle-class athletic participation is just beginning to

be understood. Adelman's work shows that contrary to conventional belief,
a middle-class sporting culture was evolving even before the Civil War,based
on the ideology of rational recreation which asserted that good clean sport
could build character, morality, and public health. A middle-class sporting
boom occurred after the war, a product of higher wages, more leisure time,
public transportation that made ball fields and parks accessible, and the new
sports creed. A new middle-class definition of manliness and the bureaucra-
tization of their workplace made the middle classes very receptive to the new
sports ideology. They became avid fans of spectator sports and organized
voluntary athletic organizations to facilitate participation, sociability, and
status enhancement.
Important work has also been completed on blue-collar athletics, although
much remains to be done. Adelman and Gorn have revealed the prominence
of a traditionally-oriented antebellum sporting fraternity numerically domi-
nated by manual workers accustomed to a casual or self-controlled workpace
that was tied to taverns and other centers of male bachelor subculture. This
world did not completely disappear, but the rise of the factory system with
its accompanying low wages and time-work discipline, the loss of old playing
sites because of urbanization, the effects of the civilizing process, Sunday blue
laws, and the high cost of transportation severely limited the sporting options
of inner city residents to local saloons, poolrooms, or bowling alleys."7
The ethnic factor in sport was a product of the cultural baggage of new-
comers, the timing of arrival, their rate of acculturation, and the location of
their homes in ethnic villages in crowded slums or more spacious zones of
emergence. The old immigrants came with an athletic heritage and imme-
diately established sports clubs, but the new immigrants had no such tradi-
tion, and it was mainly their sons who got involved in sport. The ethnic sports
clubs were communities open to all people of the same background, regard-
less of social class. Sports clubs helped ease the transition into a new envi-
ronment, aided in preserving cultural identity, and had the potential for de-
veloping athletic heroes and high quality teams who instilled pride among
fellow ethnics and earned respect from outsiders. Yet, as Gary Mormino
points out in his study of St. Louis Italians, the promoting of ethnic identi-
fication could hinder assimilation, even if the game being played was base-
ball, and not a traditional ethnic pastime. Ethnicity could also have distinctly
dysfunctional aspects. Most obviously, interethnic hostilities frequently fo-
mented fights at city parks, beaches, and other athletic facilities. In addition,
it was a crucial nexus in the involvement of organized crime in gambling
sports. 18
Only a small portion of the growing literature on urban space has been
devoted to sports; however, the availability and use of park space became an
important political issue in the late nineteenth century. Inner city residents
utilized their own agency to secure small parks and playgrounds near their
homes since they resided too far from the often inaccessible large suburban
parks. Works on the development and location of semipublic sports facilities
examine such issues as site selection, construction, uses, and impact on sur-
rounding areas.19
Researchers have found that the role of machine politicians in sport has
been extensive. They sponsored neighborhood picnics, helped (or hindered)
the development of park space, and dominated professional sport for dec-
ades. Adelman has demonstrated that antebellum prize fighting was inti-
mately connected with urban machine politics, a trend that was especially
strong in the period 1890-1920, after which hoodlums supplanted their po-
litical cronies. In City GamesI indicate their pivotal role in turf sports, while
Ted Vincent's Mudville'sRevenge(1981) (and my TouchingBase)examines their
prominent role in professional baseball up to about 1920. The urban bosses
used their clout and inside information to protect their sports businesses from
competitors and get preferential treatment from local governments, just as
they did with their other investments. These sports magnates frequently
worked in conjunction with organized crime for mutual advantages.
While professional sports were rife with corruption, progressive middle-
class reformers sponsored boys' sports programs to control inner city youth
and make them into moral and useful citizens. These actions were originally
justified by the principles of muscular Christianity, and then in the early 1900s
by the new evolutionary theory of play. Rader summarizes how organizations
like the YMCA, PSAL, the Playground Association of America, and various
settlement houses encouraged adult-supervised team play for boys with high
expectations, but ended up with limited results.20
Late nineteenth century interscholastic sports programs were largely stu-
dent-initiated on the model of local college programs. After the turn of the
century control passed to school administrators, often with tacit student sup-
port that welcomed more professional leadership to fight the abuses ema-
nating from a win-at-all-costs attitude. Administrators encouraged competi-
tive sport to increase school spirit, promote community identification with
the school, and, as Rader points out, following the rise of the comprehensive
high school in the 1920s, to teach students valuable lessons on preparation
for future vocations.21
College sport has long been the subject of historical research, yet the only
major study is Ronald A. Smith's Sportsand Freedom:TheRise of Big-TimeCol-
legeAthletics(1988). Focusing on Harvard and Yale up through 1906 when the
NCAA was organized, Smith has three major themes: (1) The Oxbridge col-
leges had an enormous influence on American sport by providing a model
for Harvard and Yale, which were a generation behind in adopting various
sports and such conventions as written rules and amateurism. However,
American intercollegiate sport was not limited to a few elite institutions, and
amateurism was sustained only in theory. Our ideology proclaimed the col-
leges as upholders of amateurism at the same time they believed in winning
at all costs and facilitated the professionalization of athletics. (2) The funda-
mental nature of modern college sport was already revealed in the nineteenth
century. College sport based on the Yale model was commercialized right
from the start, was soon professionalized, and was highly rationalized well
before the formation of the NCAA. (3) The development of college sports was
always connected to the American belief in freedom. This meant at first the
freedom of students to develop their own extracurricularactivities, but in-
creasingly meant the freedom of institutions to deal with intercollegiate ath-
letics as they thought best.22
The current interest in fitness is reflected by a substantial new literature on
its intellectual history. James Whorton, Harvey Green, and PatriciaVerbrugge
all examine middle-class attitudes about health from the Age of Jackson
through the Progressive Era. They date the origins of the health movement
to the 1830s as a reaction to the rise of the city, Enlightenment theories of
human potentiality, widespread unhappiness with mainstream medicine,
the rise of evangelical Christianity, and the general thrust for social reform.
It was led by health faddists, physicians, physical educators, and utopians
who believed in the possibility of physical well-being and its value for per-
sonal and societal improvement, and who believed in a positive sports creed
that promised national regeneration through exercise and athletics. Green
identifies a cyclical series of continuous quests for fitness and renewal (1830-
60, 1860-90, 1890-1940), but Whorton and Verbrugge argue that the next great
health movement began in the late nineteenth century and became part of
the Progressive movement. It was caused by concerns about the quality of
life in the industrial city, growing awareness of the germ theory, elite fears
for the future of the white race, a quest for social efficiency, and the need to
improve character. Verbrugge's monograph Able BodiedWomanhood: Personal
Healthand SocialChangein Nineteenth-CenturyBoston(1988), is one of the few
to examine women's sport, focusing on the rise of well-being among middle-
class nineteenth-century Bostonians. She examines the Ladies Physiological
Institute (1848), the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics (1889), and the ath-
letic program at Wellesley College to demonstrate women's growing aware-
ness and understanding of health issues, but fails to show how this knowl-
edge was employed for social change.23
The literatureon post-World WarII sport has been criticalof the institution,
exemplified by Randy Roberts and James Olson's Winningis the Only Thing
(1989), which analyzed the dark side of contemporary sport history. They
argue that sport has become an ugly national obsession in which victory is
paramount. They consider such topics as the political manipulation of the
Olympics, sports scandals, racism, the fitness fad, and the business of sport.
Particularattention is given to the impact of television, and why TV in the
late 1940s found indoor sports (boxing, wrestling, and roller derby) easy to
broadcast and schedule, and enormously popular with their viewers. Major
league baseball soon became a staple as well. In the early 1960s Roone Arledge
and other astute network executives who recognized an even greater poten-
tial of sports telecasting to build ratings came to power, promoting football
and a variety of other weekend sports programs. Rader's In Its Own Image:
How TelevisionHas Transformed Sports(1984) is extremely critical of the role of
TV in ruining prize fighting and the minor leagues, altering rules and tradi-
tional styles of competition, and destroying the aesthetic foundations of
sport. Rader asserts that TV caused spectatorial contests to lose their special
sense of drama and made all too visible the warts of sports heroes. He is taken
to task by Joan Chandler, in Televisionand NationalSport:TheUnitedStatesand
Britain(1988), who argues that TV is not to blame because many rule changes
occurred long before TV and that changes are simply the natural result of
adaptation. She applauds the ability of TV to tear away some of the mystique
of sport, supply a better seat closer to the field of play, provide instant replay,
and be seen "live" by millions of fans.
Rader and Roberts/Olson also focus on the recent business history of
sport-the importance of tax laws on profitability, the changing character of
the owners, and the altered calculus of player-management relations since
the end of the reserve clause. These works and others examine the impact of
urbanization on the rise of new franchises and sports leagues, the decline of
the rustbelt and the rise of the sunbelt, and suburbanization. My own book,
City Games,demonstrates how cities compete with each other to attractteams
by publicly financing sports buildings and otherwise subsidizing private en-
terprises. A key example of a franchise shift was the Dodgers' move west to
Los Angeles. Neil Sullivan, in TheDodgersMove West(1987), argues that Walter
O'Malley fled Brooklyn because of a lack of support from local city fathers
and was pulled to the Coast by Los Angeles boosters and politicians. He
downplays O'Malley's acute business sense, which recognized the great po-
tential for profits in a virgin territory and the great deal he negotiated for
Chavez Ravine.24
Finally, there have been several important biographies outside of baseball
and boxing. In TheGamesMust Go On: AveryBrundageand the OlympicMove-
ment (1983), Allen Guttman argues that Brundage sought to make Olympi-
anism an international religion based on the amateur ideal. Brundage devoted
most of his adult life to international sports, which he ruled with a heavy,
insensitive, anti-Semitic hand epitomized by his fight against a boycott of the
1936 Berlin Olympics and his refusal to cancel or curtail the 1972 Munich
Games after the Palestinian guerilla raid. Focusing on the hero of the 1936
Games, William Baker's excellent JesseOwens:An AmericanLife(1986) exposes
many myths about Owens, such as his supposed inability to cash in on his
fame, and blames Owens for his financial problems. When Owens finally
became economically secure in the late 1960s, he became an ardent supporter
of the status quo and a foe of the Black Athletic Revolution.25
Historians have generally neglected pro football. An exception is Michael
O'Brien's illuminating biography of Vince Lombardi, the great Green Bay
coach of the 1960s. O'Brien found the roots of Lombardi's success in his fierce
ambition, egotism, and Jesuit education that trained him to be dedicated,
committed, self-sacrificing, and respectful of authority, duty, and human dig-
nity. A severe taskmaster and great motivator, Lombardi had the ability to
discern strengths and weaknesses, and prepare accordingly for each con-
test.26
Perhaps no topic has been as neglected as women in sport. Larry Engel-
mann's The Goddessand the AmericanGirl (1988), a dual biography of tennis
stars Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills, is a major step in correcting this de-
ficiency. This extremely informative, if overlong, book rescues these heroines
of the 1920s from the dust bins of history. Lenglen symbolized the glory of a
romantic, revitalized France, while the wholesome and beautiful Wills was a
poised, independent woman who symbolized the greatness of a young, dem-
ocratic America, and challenged the conventional wisdom that women could
not be fierce competitors. Better known in their day than most movie stars,
many of their accomplishments on the court have never been eclipsed.27
Sport historians can be enormously proud of the great strides made in the
past decade, and we can look forward to continued distinguished scholarship
in the future as new topics are explored, novel questions are raised, and
greater use of theory, quantification techniques, interdisciplinary methods,
and comparative analysis are employed.28 The history of sports such as auto
racing, billiards, bowling, golf, harness racing, tennis, and thoroughbred rac-
ing have yet to be examined. We need studies of professional football, inter-
scholastic sports, twentieth-century college athletics, and the role of gender.
Future studies should consider such variables as ethnicity, race, gender, class,
power, commercialization, and professionalization. Scholars should give
greater attention to the relationship between sport and institutions such as
local and national governments, and issues such as gambling and organized
crime. Other topics that merit attention include sport and diplomacy, sport
as an agent of cultural diffusion, youth sports, sport and social mobility, sport
and urban boosterism, and the social composition of sports crowds. We need
to study the business history of sport.29Who were the prominent entrepre-
neurs? What were their methods? How successful were they? More research
is needed on the development of working-class sport and a distinctive work-
ing-class sporting culture (or the embourgeoisement of the working class by
sport). Questions of agency and hegemony need to be considered. What was
the role of unions, machine politicians, and employers (welfare capitalism)
in sponsoring blue-collar athletics, especially in the inter-war era? Little is
known about the use of urban public space (parks, alleys, streets) for sports.
What was the impact of the New Deal on public space and sports?30Nor
should our recent emphasis on metropolitan sport cause us to forget rustic
sports such as hunting and fishing or the nature of sporting pastimes in small
towns.3' Finally, enormous opportunities still exist in the genre of biography.
Historians should examine the lives of heroes like Muhammed Ali and her-
oines like Billie Jean King; elite sponsors like James Gordon Bennett, Jr.;pro-
moters like Richard J. Fox of the NationalPoliceGazette,or Bill Veeck; and ex-
ecutives like James E. Sullivan of the AAU, baseball commissioner Kenesaw
Mountain Landis, or long-time National League President August Herrm-
ann.32 Such studies will illuminate the history of sport, reflect the history of
the broader society, and answer important questions about the American ex-
perience.
StevenA. Riess, Departmentof History,NortheasternIllinois University,is theau-

thorof City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of
Sport (1989) and editor of the Journalof SportHistory.
1. FrederickL. Paxson, "The Rise of Sports,"MississippiValleyHistoricalReview4 (Sep-

tember 1917):143-68;John A. Krout,Annalsof AmericanSport(1929).See also, JennieHol-
liman, AmericanSports,1785-1835(1931);ArthurM. Schlesinger,TheRiseof theCity:1878-
1898(1933);FosterRheaDulles, AmericaLearnsto Play:A Historyof PopularRecreation, 1607-
1940(1940);JohnR. Betts, "TheTechnologicalRevolutionand the Riseof Sport, 1850-1900,"
MississippiValleyHistoricalReview40 (September1953):231-56, and "Mindand Bodyin Early
AmericanThought,"JournalofAmerican History54 (March1968):787-805.Forearly surveys
of sport history, see Betts, America'sSportingHeritage,1850-1950(1974);JohnA. Lucasand
RonaldA. Smith, TheSagaofAmericanSports(1978).On baseball,see HaroldSeymour,Base-
ball,2 vols. (1960-71);David Q. Voigt, AmericanBaseball,3 vols. (1966-83).The finer biog-
raphies include Robert Creamer,Babe(1974);MarshallSmelser, TheLifeThatRuthBuilt
(1975);RandyRoberts,JackDempsey:TheManessaMauler(1979).
For recent review essays on Americansport history, see Melvin L. Adelman, "Acade-
miciansand AmericanAthletics:A Decade of Progress,"Journalof SportHistory10 (Spring
1983):80-106;BenjaminG. Rader,"ModernSports:In Searchof Interpretations,"Journalof
SocialHistory13 (Winter1979):307-21;Allen Guttmann,"Commentary:Who's on First?or,
Books on the Historyof AmericanSports,"Journalof AmericanHistory66 (September1979):
348-54;Stephen Hardy, "TheCity and the Rise of AmericanSport, 1820-1920,"Exerciseand
SportsSciencesReviews9 (1981):183-219;Steven A. Riess, "Sportand the AmericanDream:
A ReviewEssay,"JournalofSocialHistory14 (December1980):295-301;JulesTygiel,"Playing
by the Book:BaseballHistoryin the 1980s,"BaseballHistory2 (Winter1986):6-17.
2. On colonial sport, see T. H. Breen, "Horses and Gentlemen: The Cultural Significance
of Gambling Among the Gentry in Virginia," William& Mary Quarterly34 (April 1977): 329-
47; Nancy Struna, "Puritans and Sports: The Irretrievable Tide of Change," Journalof Sport
History 4 (Spring 1977): 1-21, "The Formalizing of Sport and the Formation of the Elite: The
Chesapeake Gentry, 1650-1720," Journalof SportHistory, 3 (Winter 1986): 212-34, and "Sport
and Society in Early America," InternationalJournal of History of Sport 5 (December 1988):
292-311; Hans Peter Wagner, Puritan Attitudes TowardRecreationin Early Seventeenth-Century
New England (1982); Allen Guttmann, A WholeNew Ball Game:An Interpretationof American
Sports (1988), ch. 3. On early southern sport, see Guttmann, ch. 4; Bertram Wyatt Brown,
SouthernHonor: Ethics and Behaviorin the Old South (1982); Patricia C. Click, The Spirit of the
Times:Amusements in Nineteenth-CenturyBaltimore,Norfolk, & Richmond(1989).
John Dizikes argues (Sportsmenand Gamesmen,1981) that in the antebellum era the ideas
and behavior of sporting men underwent a crucial shift from the values of sportsmen to
gamesmen. The elite sportmen accepted both the explicit rules of the game and the un-
written code of conduct that went along with the rules. The bourgeois gamesmen acknowl-
edged the rules, but did not see any code of conduct accompanying them. They were not
cheaters, but would bend or circumvent the rules when necessary. It was not how you
played the game, but that you won that counted.
3. Melvin L. Adelman, A SportingTime:New YorkCity and the Rise of ModernAthletics, 1820-
70 (1986); Allen Guttmann, From Ritual to Record:The Nature of Modern Sport (1978), Sports
Spectators(1986), and WholeNew Ball Game.
4. Benjamin G. Rader, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Television
(1990, 2d. ed.). The new edition is substantially different from the original, subtitled From
the Age of FolkGamesto the Age of Spectators(1983) because Rader expertly integrates the new
scholarship on sport and American history and significantly alters his periodization which
originally comprised three eras: The Age of Folk Games (1607-1850); The Age of the Player
(1850-1920); and The Age of the Spectator (1920 to the Present).
The section titles in the new edition are a big improvement, but most sport historians
will be uncomfortable with the new periodization, especially for the nineteenth century.
Adelman's designation of the period 1820 to 1870 as the era for the rise of modern athletics
(at least for New York City) seems more persuasive than Rader's choice of 1800-1890. Clearly
the question of periodicity remains a fundamental issue for sport historians.
5. Stephen Hardy, How Boston Played: Sport, Recreationand Community, 1865-1915 (1982);
George B. Kirsch, The Creationof American Team Sports: Baseballand Cricket, 1838-72 (1989);
Steven A. Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports
(1989).
6. For the debate over baseball's congruence with the world of work, see Goldstein, Play-
ing for Keeps;Steven Gelber, "Working at Playing: The Culture of the Workplace and the
Rise of Baseball," Journalof Social History 16 (June 1983): 3-20, and " 'Their Hands Are All
Out Playing': Business and Amateur Baseball, 1845-1917," Journalof SportHistory 11 (Spring
1984): 4-27; Melvin L. Adelman, "Baseball, Business and the Work Place: Gelber's Thesis
Reexamined," Journalof Social History 23 (Winter 1989): 283-302.
7. Steven A. Riess, TouchingBase:ProfessionalBaseballand AmericanCulture in the Progressive
Era (1980). For a discussion of how baseball mirrored the interwar period, see Richard C.
Crepeau, Baseball:America's Diamond Mind, 1919-1941 (1980). See also, Randy Roberts,
"Baseball Myths and American Realities," Reviews in AmericanHistory 10 (March 1982): 141-
45.
8. On the labor movement in baseball, see Lee Lowenfish and Tony Lupine, TheImperfect
Diamond: The Story of Baseball'sReserve System and the Men Who Fought It (1980). For discus-
sions of crowds and their behavior at boxing and horse racing, see Riess, City Games;Gutt-
mann, Sports Spectators. On sport and mobility, see Adelman, A Sporting Time; Riess, City
Games, "Sport and American Dream," and "Sport and Social Mobility: American Myth or
Reality," in Essays on SportHistory and SportMythology, eds. Donald G. Kyle and Gary Stark
(forthcoming).
9. Charles C. Alexander, Ty Cobb (1984), and John J. McGraw (1988); Jack B. Moore, Joe
DiMaggio: A Bio-bibliography(1985); Peter Levine, A. G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball:The
Promiseof American Sport (1985); Eugene C. Murdock, Ban Johnson:Czar of Baseball(1982).

10. See also, Joseph T. Moore, Pride Against Prejudice-The Biographyof LarryDoby (1988).
On Robinson and the press, see David K. Wiggins, "Wendell Smith, The PittsburghCourier-
Journal and the Campaign to Include Blacks in Organized Baseball, 1933-1945," Journalof
Sport History 10 (Summer 1983): 5-29; William Simons, "Jackie Robinson and the American
Mind: Journalistic Perceptions of the Reintegration of Baseball," Journalof Sport History 12
(Spring 1985): 39-64. On the integration of college sports, see the journalistic account by
Richard Pennington, Breaking the Ice: The Racial Integration of Southwest ConferenceFootball
(1987); and the articles by Wiggins and Donald Spivey in "The Black Athlete in American
Sport," a special issue of the Journalof Sport History 15 (Winter 1988). On the integration of
professional football, see Thomas G. Smith, "Outside the Pale: The Exclusion of Blacks from
Organized Professional Football, 1934-1946," in Journal of Sport History 15 (Winter 1988):
255-81, and "Civil Rights from the Gridiron: The Kennedy Administration and the Deseg-
regation of the Washington Redskins," Journalof Sport History 14 (Summer 1987): 189-208.
See also, David K. Wiggins, " 'Great Speed but Little Stamina': The Historical Debate Over
Black Athletic Superiority," Journalof Sport History 16 (Summer 1989): 158-85, and "From
Plantation to Playing Field: Historical Writings on the Black Athlete in American Sport,"
ResearchQuarterlyfor Exerciseand Sport 57 (June 1986): 101-16. For a popular account, see
Arthur J. Ashe, Jr., A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the Afro-AmericanAthlete, 1619-1986,
3 vols. (1988).
11. Janet Bruce, The Kansas City Monarchs: Championsof Black Baseball(1985); Rob Ruck,
Sandlot Seasons: Sport in BlackPittsburgh (1987).
12. On boxing, politics, and the subterranean street culture, see also, Adelman, A Sporting
Time;Elliott J. Gorn, " 'Good-Bye Boys, I Die a True American': Homicide, Nativism, and
Working-Class Culture in Antebellum New York City," Journalof AmericanHistory 74 (Sep-
tember 1987): 388-410.
13. For a similar analysis of combat sports on the frontier, see Elliott J. Gorn, " 'Gouge
and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch': The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Back-
country," AmericanHistorical Review 90 (February 1985): 18-43.
14. On the racism encountered by other leading professional athletes see, e.g., Wiggins,
"Isaac Murphy: Black Hero in Nineteenth-Century American Sport, 1861-1896," Canadian
Journalof History of Sportand Physical Education10 (May 1979): 15-32, and "Peter Jackson and
the Elusive Heavyweight Championship: A Black Athlete's Struggle against the Late-Nine-
teenth-Century Color Line," Journal of Sport History 12 (Summer 1985): 143-68; Andrew
Ritchie, Major Taylor:The ExtraordinaryCareerof a ChampionBicycleRacer(1988).
15. On the white reaction to black champions, see Frederick C. Jaher, "White America
Views Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Muhammed Ali," in Sport in America, New Historical
Perspectives,ed. Donald Spivey (1985), pp. 145-92.
16. Adelman, A SportingTime;Gorn, Manly Art; Hardy, How BostonPlayed;Rader, American
Sports.
17. On working-class sport between 1870 and 1940, see also Francis G. Couvares, The
Remakingof Pittsburgh: Class and Culture in an Industrializing City, 1877-1919 (1984); Riess,
City Games;Ted Vincent, Mudville's Revenge: The Rise and Fall of American Sport (1981). On
sport and welfare capitalism, see Wilma Pesavento, "Sport and Recreation in the Pullman
Experiment, 1880-1900," Journalof SportHistory 9 (Summer 1982): 38-62; Pesavanto and Lisa
C. Raymond, " 'Men Must Play: Men Will Play': Occupations of Pullman Athletes, 1880 to
1900," Journalof Sport History 11 (Summer 1984): 233-51.
18. Gary Ross Mormino, "The Playing Fields of St. Louis: Italian Immigrants and Sport,
1925-1941," Journalof Sport History 9 (Sumer 1982): 5-16.
19. Hardy, How Boston Played; Hardy and Alan G. Ingham, "Games, Structures and
Agency: Historians on the American Play Movement," Journalof Social History 17 (Winter
1983): 285-302; Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workersand Leisurein an In-
dustrial City, 1870-1920 (1983). On public space in the twentieth century, see Riess, City
Games;Judith Anne Davidson, "The Federal Government and the Democratization of Public
Recreational Sport, New York City, 1933-43," (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts,
1983). On semipublic space, see Kirsch, Creationof AmericanTeamSports;Riess, City Games.

20. Rader, American Sports; David I. Macleod, Building Characterin the American Boy: The
Boy Scouts, YMCA and Their Forerunners,1870-1920 (1983); Dominick Cavallo, Muscles and
Morals: Organized Playgrounds and Urban Reform, 1880-1920 (1981); J. Thomas Jable, "The
Public Schools Athletic League of New York City: Organized Athletics for City School Chil-
dren, 1903-1914," in TheAmericanSportingExperience:A HistoricalAnthology of Sport in Amer-
ica, ed., Steven A. Riess (1984).
21. Rader, American Sports. Jeffrey Miral, "From State Control to Institutional Control of
High School Athletics: Three Michigan Cities, 1883-1905," Journalof SocialHistory 16 (Winter
1982): 82-99; Timothy P. O'Hanlon, "School Sports as Social Training: The Case of Athletics
and the Crisis of World War I," Journalof Sport History 9 (Spring 1982): 5-29.
22. See also, Patrick Bryant Miller, "Athletics in Academe: College Sports and American
Culture, 1850-1920" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1987). Still very val-
uable are Guy M. Lewis, "The American Intercollegiate Football Spectacle, 1869-1917"
(Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1965); Robin Dale Lester, "The Rise, Decline and Fall
of Football at the University of Chicago, 1892-1940" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago,
1973).
23. James C. Whorton, Crusadersfor Fitness: TheHistory of AmericanHealth Reformers(1982);
Harvey Green, Fit for America:Health, Fitness, Sport, and American Society (1986). See also
Mrozek, Sportand Mentality;Kathryn Grover, ed., Fitness in AmericanCulture:Imagesof Health
Sport, and the Body, 1830-1940 (1989), which reached me too late to be included in this essay.
24. See also, Cary S. Henderson, "Los Angeles and the Dodger War, 1957-1962," Southern
CaliforniaQuarterly62 (Fall 1980): 261-89; Thomas S. Hines, "Housing, Baseball and Creep-
ing Socialism; The Battle of Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, 1949-1959," Journalof UrbanHistory
8 (February 1982): 123-43.
25. On American blacks and the Olympics, see Donald Spivey, "Black Consciousness
and Olympic Protest Movement, 1964-1980," in Spivey, Sport in America, 239-62.
26. Michael O'Brien, Vince:A PersonalBiographyof VinceLombardi(1987). On the early days
of pro football, see Marc Maltby, "The Origin and Early Development of Professional Foot-
ball, 1890-1920," (Ph.D. diss., Ohio University, 1987).
27. See also Nancy L. Struna, "Beyond Mapping Experience: The Need for Understanding
in the History of American Sporting Women," Journalof Sport History 11 (Spring 1984): 120-
33; Cindy L. Himes, "The Female Athlete in Americani Society, 1860-1940" (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Pennsylvania, 1986); Margo Lynn Anderson, "A Legal History and Analysis
of Sex Discrimination in Athletics: Mixed Gender Competition, 1970-1987" (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Minnesota, 1989).
28. See, e.g., Stephen Hardy and Alan Ingham, "Sport: Structuration: Subjugation and
Hegemony," Theory, Culture and Society 2 (1984): 85-103; Melvin L. Adelman, "Quantifica-
tion and Sport: The American Jockey Club, 1866-1867: A Collective Biography," in Spivey,
Sport in America, 51-75; Chandler, Televisionand National Sport.
29. Stephen Hardy, "Entrepreneurs, Organizations and the Sport Marketplace: Subjects
in Search of Historians," Journalof SportHistory 13 (Spring 1986): 14-33. James E. Miller, The
BaseballBusiness: Pursuing Pennants and Profits in Baltimore(1990), published after this essay
was completed, should help fill this gap in the literature.
30. Hardy and Ingham, "Games, Structures, and Agency"; Davidson, "Federal Govern-
ment and the Democratization of Public Recreational Sport." On baseball and the masses,
see Harold Seymour, Baseball,vol. 3, ThePeople'sGame(1990), published after this essay was
completed.
31. Carl M. Becker, and Richard H. Grigsby, "Baseball in the Small Ohio Community,
1865-1900," in Spivey, Sport in America, 77-94.
32. The August Herrmann Papers, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, N.Y., is one
of the few major manuscript collections on professional sport.

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The New Sport History

They propose that the modernization of sport is a product of social systems

assumptions about their nation when it was threatened by immigration, ur-

Sullivan's life is recounted in great detail in Michael T. Isenberg's JohnL.

The development of middle-class athletic participation is just beginning to

StevenA. Riess, Departmentof History,NortheasternIllinois University,is theau-

1. FrederickL. Paxson, "The Rise of Sports,"MississippiValleyHistoricalReview4 (Sep-

Promiseof American Sport (1985); Eugene C. Murdock, Ban Johnson:Czar of Baseball(1982).

1983). On semipublic space, see Kirsch, Creationof AmericanTeamSports;Riess, City Games.

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