Preparing outfits and candy treats for the Sugar Ball, Cocoa, who longs to impress her favorite boy band, conjures a magical chocolate wand that winds up in the wrong hands, causing a huge chocolate mess throughout Sugar Valley.

In preparation for the upcoming Sugar Ball, all of the Candy Fairies are making fabulous new dresses to wear and candy treats to share. Cocoa wants to make her outfit extra special (to impress the Sugar Pops, her favourite boy-band) and so creates a magical chocolate wand to match her stunning new gown. But things go wrong when she loses her wand and it ends up in the wrong hands. Now Sugar Valley is a total chocolate mess! There are chocolate puddles everywhere and the spring candy crops are all smudged with chocolatey goo. Can Cocoa and her friends find the culprit and clean up the mess before the Sugar Ball is cancelled?

This collection illustrates the expansiveness of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of sport. While rooted in anthropology, these essays consider American sports in their social, economic, cultural and political aspects, charting their evolution. The book draws from history, sociology, and political science; as well as considering the relationship between the developed and developing world; and culture and masculinity. The first part of the book considers the local and global interplay of professional baseball, covering: Major League Baseball’s impact on the Dominican Republic nationalism and baseball on the Mexican/US border the globalizing forces of baseball as an industry. The second part of the book is concerned with the cultural examination of the responsiveness of masculinity to social and cultural forces, examining: the exaggerated world of bodybuilders in Southern California the cross-cultural comparisons of male behaviour on a bi-national baseball team in Mexico the historical examination of Jews in American sport. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society

This book critically examines the ways in which sports contribute to, or inhibit, social well-being, the directions these changes take and the conditions necessary for sport to have beneficial outcomes. The themes addressed in the book demonstrate the diversity and versatility of the social impacts sport can potentially achieve as well as the variable benefits of sport in different social contexts. The contributions are focused around four major themes: - Sport development and social change: intended and unanticipated consequences - Empowerment and personal change through sport - Sport participation, social inclusion and social change - The impact of sport in society: historical and comparative perspectives The volume constitutes the first scholarly attempt to locate, compare and conceptualize the social impact of sport in different local, national and international contexts. Through international comparison and empirically grounded case studies the book provides an important new departure in the study of the social meanings of sport in society, linking themes and areas that have previously been studied merely separately from one another. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Smart Ball follows Major League Baseball's history as a sport, a domestic monopoly, a neocolonial power, and an international business. MLB's challenge has been to market its popular mythology as the national pastime with pastoral, populist roots while addressing the management challenges of competing with other sports and diversions in a burgeoning global economy. Baseball researcher Robert F. Lewis II argues that MLB for years abused its legal insulation and monopoly status through arrogant treatment of its fans and players and static management of its business. As its privileged position eroded eroded in the face of increased competition from other sports and union resistance, it awakened to its perilous predicament and began aggressively courting athletes and fans at home and abroad. Using a detailed marketing analysis and applying the principles of a "smart power" model, the author assesses MLB's progression as a global business brand that continues to appeal to a consumer's sense of an idyllic past in the midst of a fast-paced, and often violent, present.

This is a story of a young black boy with an unmistakable Irish surname, who takes you on a journey of the first half of his life, living and growing up in a totally white middle-class neighbourhood. When he starts school, he finds he is still the only black face; this doesn't change throughout all of his school years. The story passes from early years to teenage years, and into young adult life. The story begins with his earliest childhood memory as a three-year-old. Then it goes on to describe why his dad is his first hero, for whom this book was written. Still in short trousers, he goes on a trip overseas and talks of the place his parents call 'home', a thousand miles away from the place where he was born in Dulwich, London, England. The black boy is determined to have fun. He is preoccupied, like any other boy approaching teenage years, with music, cars, and girls. This is all that is important and his priority. That same boy is now reaching manhood, he is still having fun, but has strengthened those teenage priorities of music, cars, and girls. He is a young man, working for a living now and paying his own way. His philosophy has not changed: more music, faster cars, and older women.

Nonfiction films about sports have been around for decades, yet few scholarly articles have been published on these works. In Identity and Myth in Sports Documentaries, editors Zachary Ingle and David M. Sutera have assembled a collection of essays that show how myth and identity--national, religious, ethnic, and racial--are constructed, perpetuated, or questioned in documentaries produced in the United States, France, Australia, Germany, and Japan. This collection is divided into three sections. "American Identity and Myth" contains essays on consumerism, religion in sports, and post-9/11 America. "Race and Ethnicity" examines the ways in which African American, Mexican American, and Jewish identity are portrayed in the documentaries under discussion. "Global Perspectives" features films and TV series produced outside of the United States or those that provide perspectives on the international sport scene. Spanning several decades, the landmark documentaries discussed in this volume include Hoop Dreams, The Endless Summer, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, Olympia, and Tokyo Olympiad and address such subjects as baseball, football, basketball, boxing, soccer, surfing, and the Olympics. The essays pose such questions as "How are notions of the American dream involved in athletes' aspirations?", "How do media texts from Australia or France construct Australian and French identity, respectively?", and "How did filmmakers such as Leni Riefenstahl, Kon Ichikawa, and Bud Greenspan infuse their Olympic documentaries with national ideology despite being intended for an international audience?" By tackling these subjects, Identity and Myth in Sports Documentaries is an intriguing read for scholars, students, and the general public alike.