Readings: A Brief History of American Sports

Carson Cistulli has recently “become literate.” Allow him to celebrate his new skill by sharing selections from his reading list.

Text: A Brief History of American Sports. (Click here for Google Books page.)
Authors: Elliott J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein
Pages: 290
Pages Discussed Here: Preface and pp. 1-23

Your Private Dancer Surrogate Reader
Unlike in my first submission to this Readings series, it’s not my ambition here to make any sort of conclusive statements about the text in question, but rather to act almost as a surrogate reader. Perhaps when I’m done with the book — or the relevant sections, at least — it will make sense to explore parts of it more deeply. Until then, I plan only to parrot the authors’ words, and to annotate them lightly with hilarious asides.

On the Authors of the Text
Gorn is a professor of American Civilization and History at Brown and holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale. If this article from Slate — about the historical accuracy of Michael Mann’s Public Enemies — is any indication, he also appears quite interested in crime and/or film.

Goldstein is a professor of History at the University of Hartford. If this image of him is any indication, he grows facial hair with hardly any difficulty.

Both authors have written previously about sport — Gorn about bare-knuckle fighting in The Manly Art, Goldstein about the history of early baseball in Playing for Keeps.

On Relevance to Baseball
The book, being a story of sport in America, will undoubtedly treat baseball at some length. However, owing to the fact that the first chapter examines English sport and, generally, a period of time before the invention of baseball proper, it is not treated per se.

Five Notable Things from the Present Selection
• Page xii, in the preface, includes this brief passage about the stadium experience, which is sure to travel straight to your emotions: “Sports arenas are America’s living galleries, where we witness all the beauty and grace and passion of which humans are capable.”
• On page 7, the authors note that “[r]ough football games played by masses of brawling men were mandatory on Shrove Tuesday.” I was unfamiliar with this term (i.e. Shrove Tuesday), but it’s apparently the same thing as Mardi Gras — that is, the last day before Lent.
• Also on page 7, the authors quote at length from a pretty excellent description (by 17th century-er Richard Carew) of the super-dangerous pastime known as “hurling.” The point of the game? To get a small silver ball into the goal. Except the goal is four miles away. And there are no boundaries. And you’re allowed to stab people, basically.
• Observation from pages 9-11: Puritans were jerks who hated fun.
• On page 13, the authors quote from a text about cock-fighting: “Those who put their money on the losing cock have to pay up immediately so that a hostler in his apron often wins several guineas from a Lord.” I thought, perhaps, that hostler was a lingual ancestor of hustler. Unfortunately, no: a hostler is someone who takes care of horses.