Sports history

• The birth of modern sports: from baseball to football (aka soccer)
• Characteristics of modern sports

  • Contrast it with what were pre-modern sports
  • Rapid evolution of capitalism
  • Industrialization
  • From countryside to cities
  • Expansion/exploitation of colonial world
  • Feature of late 18th- 19th century
• Sports is a modern set of practices (Edelman and Wilson, 5)
• Cities and sports are forever linked by the 19th century, we cannot detach it from one another to understand la we need to understand how dodgers is where its at
• Norbert Elias argument: the civilizing process

  • Modern sports is a part of "the civilizing process" civilizing the world
  • Sports uses militarized language (provides another layer of conditioning people over time)
  • Modern sports minimizes violence, injury, and death
• Military contexts for the origins of baseball

  • Soldiers played baseball during the American Revolutionary War
  • First organized baseball game by soldiers in the Mexican War in the 1840s
  • Soldiers organized games during the American Civil War
  • Baseball helped to consolidate the nation after the Civil War
• How/Why did football (aka soccer) spread globally in the 19th century

  • Spreads from Britain to foreign ports and imperial postings
  • Part of British imperial culture
  • Rejected/resisted as part of British culture in some places
  • Cricket was also rejected in favor of baseball
• Spread of soccer is connected to the british empire
• What does the "Imperial man" tell us about modern sports

  • Military and sports are connected
  • Empire and sports are connected
  • Fitness, fun, and playing sports builds masculinity as a way to the imperial man
• What does the "New woman" tell us about modern sports

  • Change in clothing from formal wear to modified garments to be able to play sports, outdoor activity
  • Bicycle as a key symbol of the New woman
  • Idea of new woman and imperial man leads to new society idea that comes out of imperial revolution
• What explains the birth of Lawn Tennis


  • Combination of the imperial man, the new woman, and technology
  • Walter Clopton Wingfield patents the game in 1873
  • Charles Goodyear's vulcanization of rubber transforms equipment
  • Democratization and globalization of tennis
• Albert Spalding and the world baseball tour
• Theodore Roosevelt's interpretation of sports

  • Need to develop both the body and the mind
  • Being strong and being an athlete is not enough, need to also be a thinker
  • Ties sports to being a patriot, nationalist, and citizen
• Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden"
• Gandhi's view on modern civilization
• Gandhi: 'India is being ground down not under the English heel but under that of modern civilization'
• Gandhi argues against modern civilization
• If we get rid of the idea of modern civilization or western civilization the world would be a better place
• Men and Brute force

  • They lack real physical strength or courage
  • We have become emasculated and cowardly
  • Render us effeminate
  • In the west, they have invented games like cricket... Argues that high intellectual individuals don't play sports
• Experience shows that well developed men are seldom sportsmen (gandhi, 65)
• Ghandi provides the opposite view than that of theodore and kipling (hes inverting the argument, you have been duped by those promoting western civilization)
• Gandhi spends all his career trying to dismantle these ideas
• If you had intelligence you wouldn't be an athlete, you have to have a balance and hes seen the evils of western civilization and the people that spread christianity don't even read the bible
• Hunting animals = barbarism
• Gandhi's resolution


  • Real exercise is that which trains both mind and body alike
  • Apart from working on land the best form of exercise is walking
• Western civilization and its culture of sports is not the answer for the mind or the body
• The peasant represents the most able thing to do farming develops your brain and body
• Walking is a great activity bc you can think as well and it moves all your body
• Tennis player was not allowed to play after gandhi told the mom it was a disappointment and it was away of western civilization
• In south africa he fought against apartheid and he fights against violence
• Pierre de Coubertin's contributions to modern sports

  • Restoring the olympics games (making link of restoring very best of what greeks were doing and make it acceptable for what the european are doing today)
  • Reintroducing sports into modern life (he wants to formalize olympics into the modern life and were now going to celebrate the olympics)
• Speech, congress of Paris (1894)
• Founding of the international olympic committee- 79 delegates met
• Who does he address in the Speech? (to gentlemen) What does this tell us ( who is going to be the representative in the modern world) (they're not sure its necessary to establish something that was in the modern world )
• Return to greek olympism after several centuries
• The argument is also about celebrating the "Olympic Idea" as part of Greek Civilization
• Remember "Civilization" is a part of the main story about modern sports
• Why is sports so important for de Coubertin?

  • All interpretation of sports in modern world linked to "Greek heritage'
  • National defense
  • Physical beauty (aesthetic)
  • Health: Mind and body (becoming better, intelligent and physically)
  • Blood: joy and life: Exercise (you get joy in life by exercising, blood flows)
  • Wants his audience to interpret sports as developing the Mind, Body and Character!
• Why I revived the Olympic Games" (542-46)
• Not simply about reviving "world championship" —-> olympics are something more (representing the best of sports)