Sport has become increasingly commercialised and there are many examples of close links that have developed between sport and business. This collection examines five of them in a global context.

These nine essays selected by Lawrence Baldassaro and Richard A. Johnson present for the first time in a single volume an ethnic and racial profile of American baseball. These essayists show how the gradual involvement by various ethnic and racial groups reflects the changing nature of baseball-- and of American society as a whole-- over the course of the twentieth century. Although the sport could not truly be called representative of America until after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947, fascination with the ethnic backgrounds of the players began more than a century ago when athletes of German and Irish descent entered the major leagues in large numbers. In the 1920s, commentators noted the influx of ballplayers of Italian and Slavic origins and wondered why there were not more Jewish players in the big leagues. The era following World War II, however, saw the most dramatic ethnographic shift with the belated entry of African American ballplayers. The pattern of ethnic succession continues as players of Hispanic and Asian origin infuse fresh excitement and renewal into the major leagues.

Millions of people around the world are engaged in sports and games. This volume studies the ways in which engagement is performed in popular culture. We do not just watch football - we perform by being a fan. NBA players do not simply run up and down the court. Instead, on and off the court they perform certain roles, many informed by hip hop culture. Such performances are rhetorical: they manage attitudes, behaviors, and predispositions, influencing the distribution of power. Competitive hot dog eaters, bull riding, and Mexican wrestlers are some of the other sports and games covered by the contributors. The book is unique in bringing together the three themes of sports and games, performance, and the rhetoric of popular culture, and is relevant for both scholarly use and classroom adoption in courses ranging from sport and society, rhetoric, composition, persuasion and argument, and popular culture.

In Patriotic Games, historian Stephen Pope explores the ways sport was transformed from a mere amusement into a metaphor for American life. Between the 1890s and the 1920s, sport became the most pervasive popular cultural activity in American society. During these years, basketball was invented, football became a mass spectator event, and baseball soared to its status as the "national pasttime." Pope demonstrates how America's sporting tradition emerged from a society fractured along class, race, ethnic, and gender lines. Institutionalized sport became a trans- class mechanism for packaging power and society in preferred ways--it popularized an interlocking set of cultural ideas about America's quest for national greatness. Nowhere was this more evident than the intimate connection established between sport and national holiday celebrations. As Pope reveals, Thanksgiving sports influenced the holiday's evolution from a religious occasion to a secular one. On the Fourth of July, sporting events infused patriotic rituals with sentiments that emphasized class conciliation and ethnic assimilation. In a time of social tensions, economic downturns, and unprecedented immigration, the rituals and enthusiasms of sport, Pope argues, became a central component in the shaping of America's national identity.

Filled with insightful analysis and compelling arguments, this book considers the influence of sports on popular culture and spotlights the fascinating ways in which sports culture and American culture intersect. This collection blends historical and popular culture perspectives in its analysis of the development of sports and sports figures throughout American history. American History through American Sports: From Colonial Lacrosse to Extreme Sports is unique in that it focuses on how each sport has transformed and influenced society at large, demonstrating how sports and popular culture are intrinsically entwined and the ways they both reflect larger societal transformations. The essays in the book are wide-ranging, covering topics of interest for sports fans who enjoy the NFL and NASCAR as well as those who like tennis and watching the Olympics. Many topics feature information about specific sports icons and favorite heroes. Additionally, many of the topics' treatments prompt engagement by purposely challenging the reader to either agree or disagree with the author's analysis.

Steven Overman explores the concordant values of the Protestant ethic, capitalism, and sport by applying German scholar Max Weber's seminal thesis. Weber demonstrated a relationship between the Protestant ethic and a form of economic behavior he labeled the ôcalling of capitalism.ö