Myths and Milestones in the History of Sport

Myths and Milestones in the History of Sport takes as its starting point the need to go beyond 'newsreel' versions of the apparent turning points in sport history and to put them into a clear context. It explores a range of such watershed moments in a series of detailed and insightful studies. These moments include: the debate over the creation of particular sports; the beginnings of professional association football; the decline of amateur 'soccer'; the debate over violence in American football; the traditional throwing of the first pitch of an American baseball season by the President; the coming of male and female sport celebrity; the acknowledgement of a relationship between sport and politics; the arrival of drugs in sport; the clenched fist salute at the Olympic Games of 1968; the emergence of feminism in sport; the marriage of sport and television; the World Cup Final of 1966; and events seen mistakenly as turning points.