List of illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

1: Games The Colonists Played

English heritage

Commoners at play

Games of the English gentry

Puritan reaction

Games in Colonial New England

Games of the southern elite

Sporting life of the colonial working class

Revolutionary era

2: Emergence Of Organized Sports, 1815-60

Sports in the early national period

Democratization of racing: the trotters

Racing by land and sea

Formative years of prizefighting

Baseball: the creation of "America's game"

3: This Noble And Envigorating Game

Early professional era

Henry Chadwick and a game of numbers

Growing pains

Early years of the professional game

Emergence of the modern game

1880s: a decade of rancor

4: Formative Years Of College Football

Early years of college athletics

Football American style

Yale and the creation of football

Football moves West

Football as spectacle

Football in crisis

5: Sports And The Emergence Of Modern America, 1865-1920

Boxing enters the mainstream

Sports and social class

Early years of women's sports

Strong bodies and devout souls

America's greatest athlete

Organized play for the modern era

Interscholastic sports

6: Baseball Ascendant, 1890-1930

1890s: Years of discord

Ban Johnson and the American league

Cyclone and the Georgia Peach

Calling the shots: the manager

Federal league challenge

Crisis: gamblers fix the World Series of 1919

Babe

Baseball's golden age

7: Evil To Be Endured, "Sports On Campus, 1920-50

Essential myth of big-time college athletics

Football: driving the bus

Football's golden age: the twenties

Knute Rockne and the making of Notre Dame football

Second Challenge to big-time football

Playing nice: the demise of women's athletics

Hoop dreams

Hoop nightmares

8: Sports In An Age Of Ballyhoo, Depression, And War, 1920-45

Gee-whiz: sports journalism during the 1920s

Heroes for a heroic age

Boxing becomes respectable

Babe: the Texas tomboy

Baseball's long slump

Seabiscuit: sports star for the Depression Era

Baseball during the war years

9: America's Great Dilemma

Racism shapes American sports

Fight of the century

Separate and unequal: the Negro Leagues

Out of the cotton fields of Alabama: Jesse and Joe

Jackie

In the shadow of Jackie Robinson

Gentlepeople and sanctimonious hypocrites

Baron and the bear.

10: Television Changes The Face Of American Sports

Formative years of sports television

Tale of the tube: boxing

Professional football comes of age

Pete and Roone

NFL and the AFL make peace

Super Sunday and Monday Night

ESPN: all sports, all the time

11: College Sports In The Modern Era

Sanity code is scuttled

Creation of a cartel

Emphasis and de-emphasis

Woody and the bear

Deceit and deception: the NCAA and gender equity

Criticism of major college sports

Television and the triumph of commercialized college sports

Knight Commission Report

12: Play For Pay

Tale of two (football) cities

Urban rivalry, redevelopment, and promotion

Travails of baseball

Baseball's labor disputes

Reaping the spoils: the NFL and the world of parity

Wondrous world of magic, Larry, and Michael

Always turn left: NASCAR takes the checkered flag

Struggling to be major league

13: Do You Believe In Miracles?

Cold War shapes the Olympics

Television transforms the Olympics

Games must go on

To Boycott or not to boycott

Triumph of professionalism

Athens and beyond

14: Persistent Dilemma Of Race

I'm the greatest

Boycott, backlash and beyond

New era in race relations

Hank Aaron catches the babe

Can white men jump?

Tiger

Sister act: Venus and Serena

15: Only In America

Triumph of the swoosh

World of Jimmy the Greek

Tragedy of Pete Rose

Demise of boxing

Whatever it takes

Under a cloud: Barry Bonds chases Hank Aaron

16: Democratization Of Sports

Community Cauldron: high school sports

Conflicting views of youth sports

Golf's golden age: Arnie, the Super Mex, and the Golden Bear

Billie Jean sparks a revolution

Comeback kids

Viva America! America's soccer women

Epilogue

Notes

Index.