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Among Stephen Jay Gould's many gifts was his ability to write eloquently about baseball, his great passion. Through the years, the renowned palaeontologist published numerous essays on the sport which have now for the first time been collected in a volume alive with all the candour and insight that characterized Gould's writing. Here are his thoughts on the complexities of childhood streetball and the joys of opening day; tributes to Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, and lesser-knowns such as deaf-mute centerfielder 'Dummy' Hoy; and a frank admission of the contradictions inherent in being a lifelong Yankees fan with Red Sox season tickets. So, too, does Gould deftly apply the tools of evolutionary theory to the demise of the 0.400 hitter, the Abner Doubleday creation myth, and the improbability of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. This book is a delight - an essential addition to Gould's remarkable legacy, and a fitting tribute to his love for the game.
This book profiles 24 athletes who overcame seemingly insurmountable medical odds to attain athletic success. Each profile describes the athlete's problem, the medical issues he or she faced, how success was achieved despite the setback, and the personal qualities that helped the athlete to prevail. Part I features 15 athletes who dealt with diseases and physical disabilities, including Babe Didrikson Zaharias (cancer), Ron Santo (diabetes), Gail Devers (Graves' disease), Alonzo Mourning (kidney disease), Wilma Rudolph (polio), Scott Hamilton (a pancreatic disorder in childhood) and Jimmy Abbott (born with one hand). Part II highlights nine athletes who dealt with near-fatal or life-changing accidents and injuries, including Bill Toomey, Three-Finger Brown, Greg LeMond, Lou Brissie and Tommy John.
In his final book, Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of knowing: science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long.
"Provocative and delightfully discursive essays on natural history. . . . Gould is the Stan Musial of essay writing. He can work himself into a corkscrew of ideas and improbable allusions paragraph after paragraph and then, uncoiling, hit it with such power that his fans know they are experiencing the game of essay writing at its best."--John Noble Wilford, New York Times Book Review
More than any other modern scientists, Stephen Jay Gould has opened up to millions the wonders of evolutionary biology. His genius as an essayist lies in his unmatched ability to use his knowledge of the world, including popular culture, to illuminate the realm of science. Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould's first book, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Like all succeeding collections by this unique writer, it brings the art of the scientific essay to unparalleled heights.
Baseball is a strange sport: it consists of long periods in which little seems to be happening, punctuated by high-energy outbursts of rapid fire activity. Some find it dull; yet as philosopher and baseball fan Alva Noë argues in this concise, entertaining book, nothing could be further from the truth, for baseball is the most philosophically profound of all sports. Here Noë reflects on and explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game, in particular how it is "infinite" in its reflection on itself.
In the summer of 1932, at the beginning of the turbulent decade that would remake America, baseball fans were treated to one of the most thrilling seasons in the history of the sport. As the nation drifted deeper into the Great Depression and reeled from social unrest, baseball was a diversion for a troubled country—and yet the world of baseball was marked by the same edginess that pervaded the national scene. On-the-field fights were as common as double plays. Amid the National League pennant race, Cubs’ shortstop Billy Jurges was shot by showgirl Violet Popovich in a Chicago hotel room. When the regular season ended, the Cubs and Yankees clashed in what would be Babe Ruth’s last appearance in the fall classic. After the Cubs lost the first two games in New York, the series resumed in Chicago at Wrigley Field, with Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt cheering for the visiting Yankees from the box seats behind the Yankees’ dugout. In the top of the fifth inning the game took a historic turn. As Ruth was jeered mercilessly by Cubs players and fans, he gestured toward the outfield and then blasted a long home run. After Ruth circled the bases, Roosevelt exclaimed, “Unbelievable!” Ruth’s homer set off one of baseball’s longest-running and most intense debates: did Ruth, in fact, call his famous home run? Rich with historical context and detail, The Called Shot dramatizes the excitement of a baseball season during one of America’s most chaotic summers.
This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for millions of people around the world. The book explores how the world’s football codes - soccer, rugby league, rugby union, American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic - developed as part of the commercialised leisure industry in the nineteenth century. Football, however and wherever it was played, was a product of the second industrial revolution, the rise of the mass media, and the spirit of the age of the masses. Important reading for students of sports studies, history, sociology, development and management, this book is also a valuable resource for scholars and academics involved in the study of football in all its forms, as well as an engrossing read for anyone interested in the early history of football.
This is the first history of sport in Ireland, locating the history of sport within Irish political, social, and cultural history, and within the global history of sport. Sport and Ireland demonstrates that there are aspects of Ireland's sporting history that are uniquely Irish and are defined by the peculiarities of life on a small island on the edge of Europe. What is equally apparent, though, is that the Irish sporting world is unique only in part; much of the history of Irish sport is a shared history with that of other societies. Drawing on an unparalleled range of sources - government archives, sporting institutions, private collections, and more than sixty local, national, and international newspapers - this volume offers a unique insight into the history of the British Empire in Ireland and examines the impact that political partition has had on the organization of sport there. Paul Rouse assesses the relationship between sport and national identity, how sport influences policy-making in modern states, and the ways in which sport has been colonized by the media and has colonized it in turn. Each chapter of Sport and Ireland contains new research on the place of sport in Irish life: the playing of hurling matches in London in the eighteenth century, the growth of cricket to become the most important sport in early Victorian Ireland, and the enlistment of thousands of members of the Gaelic Athletic Association as soldiers in the British Army during the Great War. Rouse draws out the significance of animals to the Irish sporting tradition, from the role of horse and dogs in racing and hunting, to the cocks, bulls, and bears that were involved in fighting and baiting.