Sports
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I've been a big fan of football,
baseball, and basketball since I was little. Check out my
Links for
connections to web sites related to my favorite teams.
She Got Game: My
Personal Odyssey
A Summer up North: Henry Aaron and the Legend of Eau Claire Baseball She Got Game:
My Personal Odyssey
(1999) Since the beginning of the WNBA, the Houston Comets have dominated the league. They became one of my favorite teams early in the first season--even before their great success--because of players like Cynthia Cooper. Granted, the WNBA is filled with excellent female athletes who are also outstanding people, so having a "favorite" team is really not possible.
What I learned only made my respect for her as a person grow. Cooper shares stories about the poverty of her youth, writes about race and class prejudice, and talks openly about how her self-esteem suffered for years because of an acquaintance who sexually molested her--all tough topics which she discusses honestly. Knowing more about her makes her professional and personal success today seem even more tremendous. Now retired as a player, Cooper's story is still intriguing.
Me and Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-Five Years Later
(2000) This book tells the poignant story of a young boy who idolized Hank Aaron and grew up learning about racism's impact on his hero. It also includes adult reflections on racism in America and suggests that the fact that white people are surprised that such virulent racism still exists and existed as Aaron chased Babe Ruth's home run record is part of the problem. Ignorance of continued prejudice helps to perpetuate racism itself; a problem that does not exist does not need to be solved. Tolan's book does not preach, nor does it need to since its lessons should be obvious to all its readers, but reading it forced me to think about how larger societal issues are reflected in baseball's history and present. In conjunction with Tolan's book, I would recommend Aaron's own I Had a Hammer (1991).
A Summer up North: Henry Aaron and the Legend of Eau Claire Baseball
(2002) This book is incredibly well written and offers the reader insight
into an early part of Hank Aaron's life, but the book is so much more
than that. It also vividly describes minor league baseball and its
impact on one community. It delves into race relations in one Wisconsin
city in the 1950s and today. It offers story after story, engagingly
told, of how baseball affected lives of individuals and how individuals
had an impact on the world of baseball, often through simply accepting
someone like Aaron into their homes in an era where racial tension led
too many to stare rather than welcome him. Poling's book is one of the
most well-written sports histories I've read; I read the book in a day
as I couldn't put it down. Granted, partly I was interested in it
because I went to college in Eau Claire and lived in Duluth, Minnesota,
for a couple of years (another city in the Northern League he
discusses). However, I really believe that even those with no ties to
Wisconsin but rather a love of baseball or an admiration for Aaron as a
person and a baseball player will enjoy this book. Histories of the Negro Leagues and Their Greatest Players When I was a teenager, I was fascinated with the history of the Negro Leagues in baseball, reading everything I could get my hands on about how these men triumphed despite a complete disregard by organized white baseball for their dignity as human beings. Some of the wonderfully written (auto)biographies I've read more recently which treat this issue of race within baseball's history include Mark Ribowsky's biography of Josh Gibson -- The Power and the Darkness (1996), Buck O'Neil's autobiography (with Steve Wulf and David Conrads) -- I Was Right on Time (1996), Buck Leonard's autobiography (with James A. Riley) -- Buck Leonard: The Black Lou Gehrig (1995), and David W. Zang's Fleet Walker's Divided Heart: The Life of Baseball's First Black Major Leaguer (1995). Information on specific teams can be found in: For more information on the Negro Leagues, check out the home page for the official Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, located in Kansas City, which opened in 1991. Baseball Before We Knew It
(2005) This short volume is incredibly well written, which makes it a fast read, but incredibly well researched, which makes it worth lingering a while over some of the stories and details. Block provides the most comprehensive explanations I've ever read of why the various myths about the evolution of baseball have held sway over fans and historians alike for so long. He provides conclusive evidence when he can but is careful to indicate where there are gaps in our knowledge. What I really took away from the book is that baseball's evolution has been complex and that we cannot expect to find one particular moment in time when baseball as we know it now came into being. Block discusses why baseball is not a descendant of cricket, why the "rounders" theory doesn't stand up, why the Doubleday myth has no foundation in fact, and how games like stool-ball had a more important connection to modern-day baseball than other proposed ancestors. He also provides a wonderful bibliography at the end, encouraging others to further the research he has carefully put together here. Finally, I loved reading the specific references he has pulled from various texts all in one place; from a long-ago poem about women playing stool-ball to Jane Austen's reference to base-ball, all these references make baseball's history so much richer. I recommend the book to baseball fans and to historians who want to understand better this important part of American culture and how it connects to the cultures of other countries. |
I
was excited to see Cooper had written an autobiography. Even though she
has been the subject of a number of player profiles before games, there
was much about her childhood in this book that I did not know. 