Originally published in 1982, How Boston Played helps bring the study of sport within the broader scope of social history. Focusing on the fifty-year period following the Civil War, Stephen Hardy examines how Bostonians reacted to urban disorder by attempting to shape meaningful forms of community through the use and production of leisure.
Whether consciously molding the city through the construction of public spaces or developing social ties through organizations such as athletic clubs, Bostonians of all classes participated in recreation-based community building, often at...

Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore opened in 1992 as an intentional antidote to the modern multiuse athletic stadium. Home to only one sport and featuring accents of classic parks of previous generations. Oriole Park attempted to reconstitute Baltimore s past while serving as a cornerstone of downtown redevelopment. Since the gates opened at Camden yards, more than a dozen other American cities have constructed new old major league parks Cleveland, Detroit, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Houston, Arlington, Texas, and San Diego. In...

The National Football League that celebrated its first Super Bowl in 1967 bore scant resemblance to the league of its obscure origins. In its earliest years, the league was a ragtag collection of locally supported small-town teams that generated attention only in the locales in which they played, if they were lucky. Many teams received no support at all. Only after enduring a slow, often treacherous, journey did the enterprise of professional football reach its position as the king of the sports world by the late 1960s.In From Sandlots to the Super Bowl, Craig R. Coenen recounts the NFL s...