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Lee Elder
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Black Champions: Interview with Lee Elder

His experiences with racism and golf, from death threats in Memphis to breaking the sporting color barrier in South Africa.
Althea Gibson with a tennis racket on her lap.
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Black Champions: Interview with Althea Gibson

How being introverted and focused on work helped an athlete navigate a prejudiced sports culture.
The sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium’s first opening day.

Major League Baseball’s Historical Quest to Entice Middle- and Upper-Class Fans to the Park

MLB’s focus on wealthier fans stands in stark contrast to rhetoric about the ballpark that had long called it a site of egalitarian intermixing.
Illustration of Willie Mayes holding a baseball bat, while men watch from the city.

A Giant of a Man

The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark.
Picture of a baseball card of designated runner, Herb Washington.

Speed Kills

Two striking reminders of the game-changing potential of great speed and its limited value unless accompanied by other essential skills.
Three ring binder filled with a baseball card collection.

Batting by the Numbers

The evolution of baseball’s perfect lineup.
Illustration of man throwing football to sports broadcaster.

Before and After the Contest: Wraparound Sportscasting Through the Ages

National Football League pre- and postgame shows have become a testing ground for novel technology in the waning days of linear television.
Zdeněk Koubek's ID card.

Discrimination Against Trans Olympians Has Roots in Nazi Germany

1934 world champion runner Zdenek Koubek, boxer Imane Khelif, and how far we haven’t come on gender in sports.
Runners on a track and crowds in the stands at the All Africa Games, 1973.
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Afraid of an Inspiring Olympics Story

How Europe reacted when Ethiopia tried to join the famed global sporting tradition at the 1924 Paris Olympics.
A photograph of the author's brother, Steve, playing pool.

Imperfecta

Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing.
A photograph of Bonnie Erickson posing with the Phillie Phanatic mascot.

Miss Piggy Has a Mother

Everyone’s heard of Jim Henson. It’s time to give Bonnie Erickson — creator of beloved Muppets and mascots including the Phillie Phanatic — her due.
Censored stills of a naked man running.

The Decline of Streaking

Naked runners used to disrupt events seemingly all the time. Why’d they stop?
A drawing of a crowd watching a baseball game in 1886.

Before ‘Fans,’ There Were ‘Kranks,’ ‘Longhairs,’ and ‘Lions’

How do fandoms gain their names?
Women wearing early twentieth-century gym suits emblazoned with 1902, some women in baskets.

How Sports Clothes Became Fashion

The evolution of women's sportswear.
Picture of the book, "Cracks in the Outfield Wall," by Chris Holaday.

American Legion Baseball, Episode 1

The story of an incident that may have been the first time the issue of race was ever addressed on a baseball field in the Carolinas.
Basketball players taking a knee on the court and wearing "Black Lives Matter" shirts.
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How the NBA Learned to Embrace Activism

A changing NBA fan base drove the league toward an embrace of Black culture, and social justice politics.
John Thorn photographed in front of baseball memorabilia.

How Baseball’s Official Historian Dug Up the Game’s Unknown Origins

A lifelong passion for the national pastime led John Thorn to redefine the sport's relationship with statistics and reveal the truth behind its earliest days.
Christy Mathewson, a pitcher for the New York Giants from 1900-1916.

When New York Made Baseball and Baseball Made New York

The rise of the sport as we know it was centered in Gotham, where big stadiums, heroic characters, and epic sportswriting produced a pastime that bound a city together.
Three women standing in front of a 1915 automobile with a suffragist banner hanging on the side.

How Women Used Cars To Fuel Female Empowerment

From a 1915 suffragist road trip to the “First Lady of Drag Racing.”
Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, New York.

The Last Of The Brooklyn Dodgers

Richard Staff interviews four former Brooklyn Dodgers players, who, despite the team's move to Los Angeles, still identify with their Brooklyn roots.
The Sebring patent design, February 4, 1868.

Base Ball Patents

Searching for the first, in the 1860s.
A man wearing a cowboy outfit shoots at a series of targets in a sand pit

Home on the (Firing) Range: Gunfight Reenactments, “Old West” Competitive Shooting, and the Myth of Authenticity

Reenactments of the frontier west, complete with cowboy shootouts on main streets, reproduce a narrative of history that is widely accepted by millions.
Photo of a woman surfing

How Men Muscled Women Out of Surfing

Why is surfing still stuck in the 1960s when women have always done it?
The Milwaukee Turners acrobatic team, 1866.

Socialist Gym Rats Fought to End Slavery in America

Veterans of the 1848 German revolution immigrated to America with three passions burning in their hearts: barbells, beer, and socialism.
Cereal box illustration of 1839 baseball game, and caption explaining the history of the first baseball game, created by Abner Doubleday.

Baseball in the Garden of Eden

“Who controls the past,” George Orwell wrote, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” So it has been with baseball.
Jockey Isaac Murphy on the thoroughbred Tenny, circa 1890.

Born Into Slavery, A Kentucky Derby Champ Became An American Superstar

Isaac Murphy was once called ‘The Prince of Jockeys’ during the fleeting era when African Americans reigned on the nation’s racetracks.
Two horses and jockeys racing on a track.
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There Won’t Be Any Black Jockeys in the Kentucky Derby

Black jockeys dominated 19th-century American horse racing, but racism chased them away and undoing that damage has been slow going.
Two women fighting

How to Fight Like a Girl

Women have been punching each other in the face (during boxing matches) since the early 1700s.
Bernard King of the New Jersey Nets driving past Elvin Hayes of the Washington Bullets, in March of 1978.

The Racial Politics of the N.B.A. Have Always Been Ugly

A new book argues that the real history of the league is one of strife between Black labor and white ownership.
March Madness Stadium

A Harsh Reality Lies Beneath the Glory of March Madness

Despite captivating the nation with their athleticism every March, collegiate basktball players remain an exploited labor force for the profit of the NCAA.

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