New Books in Sports

Surfboards were once made of wood and shaped by hand, objects of both cultural and recreational significance. Today most surfboards are mass-produced with fiberglass and a stew of petrochemicals, moving (or floating) billboards for athletes and their brands, emphasizing the commercial rather than the cultural. Surf Craft maps this evolution, examining surfboard design and craft with 150 color images and an insightful text. From the ancient Hawaiian alaia, the traditional board of the common people, to the unadorned boards designed with mathematical precision (but built by hand) by Bob Simmons, to the store-bought longboards popularized by the 1959 surf-exploitation movie Gidget, board design reflects both aesthetics and history. The decline of traditional alaia board riding is not only an example of a lost art but also a metaphor for the disintegration of traditional culture after the Republic of Hawaii was overthrown and annexed in the 1890s.In his text, Richard Kenvin looks at the craft and design of surfboards from a historical and cultural perspective. He views board design as an exemplary model of mingei, or art of the people, and the craft philosophy of Soetsu Yanagi. Yanagi believed that a design's true beauty and purpose are revealed when it is put to its intended use. In its purest form, the craft of board building, along with the act of surfing itself, exemplifies mingei. Surf Craft pays particular attention to Bob Simmons's boards, which are striking examples of this kind of functional design, mirroring the work of postwar modern California designers.Surf Craft is published in conjunction with an exhibition at San Diego's Mingei International Museum.Richard Kenvin is Director of the Hydrodynamica Project. He writes for The Surfer’s Journal and is the guest curator of the Surf Craft exhibition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Competitive gaming, or esports - referring to competitive tournaments of video games among both casual gamers and professional players - began in the early 1970s with small competitions like the one held at Stanford University in October 1972, where some 20 researchers and students attended. By 2022, the estimated revenue of the global esports industry is in excess of $947 million, with over 200 million viewers worldwide. Regardless of views held about competitive gaming, esports have become a modern economic and cultural phenomenon.This book studies the full history of competitive gaming from the 1970s to the 2010s against the background of the arrival of the electronic and computer age. It investigates how competitive gaming has grown into a new form of entertainment, a sport-like competition, a lucrative business and a unique cultural sensation. It also explores the role of competitive gaming in the development of the video game industry, making a distinctive contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the history of video games.Zhouxiang Lu's A History of Competitive Gaming (Routledge, 2022) will appeal to all those interested in the business and culture of gaming, as well as those studying modern technological culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Scouting has been called pro baseball’s personalized way of renewing itself from year to year and a pathway to the game’s past. It takes a very special person to be a baseball scout: normal family life is out of the question because travel is a constant companion. Yet for those with the genuine calling for it, there could be no other life. Hearing the special thwack off the bat that indicates a raw prospect may be the real deal is the dream that keeps true scouts going. Scouts have the difficult task of not only discovering and signing new players but envisioning the trajectory of raw talent into the future. But the place of the traditional scout has become increasingly dire.In 2016 Major League Baseball eliminated the MLB Scouting Bureau that had been created in the 1970s to augment the regular scouting staffs of individual teams. On the eve of the 2017 playoffs that saw the Houston Astros crowned as World Series champions, the team dismissed ten professional scouts and by 2019 halved the number of all their scouts to less than twenty. More and more teams are replacing their experienced talent hunters with people versed in digital video and analytics but who have limited field knowledge of the game, driven by the Moneyball-inspired trend to favor analytics, data, and algorithms over instinct and observation.In Baseball's Endangered Species: Inside the Craft of Scouting by Those Who Lived It (U Nebraska Press, 2023), Lee Lowenfish explores in-depth how scouting has been affected by the surging use of metrics along with other changes in modern baseball business history: expansion of the Major Leagues in 1961 and 1962, the introduction of the amateur free agent draft in 1965, and the coming of Major League free agency after the 1976 season. With an approach that is part historical, biographical, and oral history, Baseball’s Endangered Species is a comprehensive look at the scouting profession and the tradition of hands-on evaluation. At a time when baseball is drenched with statistics, many of them redundant or of questionable value, Lowenfish explores through the eyes and ears of scouts the vital question of “makeup”: how a player copes with failure, baseball’s essential, painful truth.Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

In Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption (Cornell UP, 2023), Michael T. Friedman observes that as cathedrals represented power relations in medieval towns and skyscrapers epitomized those within industrial cities, sports stadiums exemplify urban American consumption at the turn of the twenty-first century. Grounded in Henri Lefebvre and George Ritzer's spatial theories in their analyses of consumption spaces, Mallparks examines how the designers of this generation of baseball stadiums follow the principles of theme park and shopping mall design to create highly effective and efficient consumption sites.In his exploration of these contemporary cathedrals of sport and consumption, Friedman discusses the history of stadium design, the amenities and aesthetics of stadium spaces, and the intentions and conceptions of architects, team officials, and civic leaders. He grounds his analysis in case studies of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore; Fenway Park in Boston; Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; Nationals Park in Washington, DC; Target Field in Minneapolis; and Truist Park in Atlanta.Emilio J. Weber is a master’s student in the Physical Cultural Studies research group at the University of Maryland at College Park. He can be reached at ejweber@umd.edu or on twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

In this episode, the journal’s Features Editor Liberty Vittert and Editor in Chief Xiao-Li Meng dig into the data behind sports with two experts: Brian Macdonald, sports analytics at Yale (formerly Carnegie Mellon University) and Kirk Goldsberry, NBA analyst at ESPN and author of Sprawlball: A Visual Tour of the New era of the NBA.This episode is syndicated from the new Harvard Data Science Review Podcast. Published by the MIT Press, Harvard Data Science Review is an open access multidisciplinary journal that defines and shapes data science as a scientifically rigorous field based on the principled and purposed production, processing, parsing and analysis of data.If you enjoy this preview of the Harvard Data Science Review podcast, find the journal on twitter at @TheHDSR and remember to subscribe to their podcast on your favorite platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Today, fighting with dagger versus dagger, or with knife versus knife, is not a common scenario that people might expect to face. However, it was more common in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, when it was normal for people to wear a dagger on their belt. Arguments or fights with daggers could break out; and while duels were more often fought with swords, combatants could also agree to do so with daggers.Carlo Parisi's Dagger Fencing: The Italian School (Fallen Rook, 2016)is not a book on modern knife fighting; rather, it is a book dealing with the historical knife fighting of Renaissance Italy. The modern blade aficionado will also find material of interest. The book offers several views of short bladed weapons that were developed and tested when cold steel was the king of weaponcraft and when duels were more common than today.Carlo Parisi was born in Northern Italy in 1974. He has always been interested in weapons and martial arts, and the two met in Historical Fencing, which he began practising in roughly 1998. A few years later, he started doing his own research, and became a member of HEMAC in 2003. Since then, he's been teaching classes at various events in Europe, and set up his own club in 2011. His main interests are sabres and daggers, but he studies a variety of weapons and methods. This is his first book on fencing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

In 2021, the NCAA began allowing student-athletes to receive compensation. NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) rule changes give student-athletes the right to work with companies in advertising campaigns, participate in signing events, and other endeavors. Attorney Richard Kent discusses the ins-and-outs of the new changes, how it is impacting the business of college sports (especially college basketball), and the future of amateur athletics.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Steve Fainaru and his brother Mark Fainaru-Wada wrote a bestselling and award-winning book (and accompanying PBS documentary series) about the NFL coverup of concussion trauma, League of Denial. This conversation inaugurates an occasional Recall this Book series on collaborative work: who does it well, what makes it succeed, why can't grumpy isolatos like English professors get with the program?The brothers generously praise the colleagues and mentors who helped them on their way. They also dig into questions of trust between collaborators and constant choices reporting and writing entails. Some stories are dogs, some are "unmakeable" and some you can't see; how do you recognize the situation and cope?Almost as afterthought, they lay bare the amount of persistent, patient long-term conversation and relationship-building that goes into finding out the truth behind events that powerful organizations. Steve explains the reporting behind his 2008 Pulitzer-winning stories about American private contractors during the invasion of Iraq. Basically, "institutions react institutionally." Then the tricky question of how to be a football fan in the concussion era arises.Mentioned in the episode:  Phil Bennett a mentor for Steve. Lance Williams journalist, partner, source-maintainer: inspiration for Mark. The memorable newspaper advisors who shaped Mark and Steve in their high-school gig at the Redwood Bark: Sylvia Jones and Donal Brown. Plus: Stand by for more of their work on the NBA in China.... Read and listen to the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

James Hibbard, author of The Art of Cycling: Philosophy, Meaning, and a Life on Two Wheels, explores the connection between philosophy and cycling, reflects on leaving professional cycling, discusses the unique relationship between cyclists and their bikes, and explores the intersection of cycling philosophy and personal healing. They also discuss the challenges of graduate school and their upcoming book on the intellectual history of Silicon Valley.

Roy White played on the New York Yankees from 1965 through the 1979 season. Roy grew up on the tough streets of Compton and created a successful all-star baseball career playing alongside such greats as Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Thurman Munson, Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and many others. Today Roy White sits among the greatest all-time Yankees in most offensive categories. After his career with the Yankees, Roy White became a star in Japan playing for the Tokyo Giants and playing alongside the greatest Japanese player of all time, Sadaharu Oh.Paul R. Semendinger's Roy White: From Compton to the Bronx (Artemesia, 2023) is Roy White's story, but it's also the story of a unique period in baseball history when the Yankees fell from grace and regained glory and the country dealt with societal changes in many ways.Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports