The oldest sport invented in what is now known as the USA is lacrosse. The American Indians had been playing lacrosse for a millennium.[2] Also, in ancient Polynesia, especially in ancient Hawaii, Polynesian people have been surfing since at least the start of the 12th century.[3]
In Chesapeake society (that is, colonial Virginia and Maryland), sports occupied a great deal of attention at every social level, starting at the top. In England, hunting was severely restricted to landowners. In USA, game was more than plentiful. Everyone—including servants and enslaved people—could and did hunt, so there was no social distinction to be had. In 1691, Sir Francis Nicholson, the governor of Virginia, organized competitions for the "better sort of Virginians onely who are Batchelors," and he offered prizes "to be shot for, wrastled, played at backswords, & Run for by Horse and foott."[4]Horse racing was the main event. The typical farmer did not own a horse in the first place, and racing was a matter for gentlemen only, but ordinary farmers were spectators and gamblers. Selected slaves often became skilled horse trainers. Horse racing was especially important for knitting the gentry together. The race was a major public event designed to demonstrate to the world the superior social status of the gentry through expensive breeding, training, boasting and gambling, and especially winning the races themselves.[5] Historian Timothy Breen explains that horseracing and high-stakes gambling were essential to maintaining the status of the gentry. When they publicly bet a large fraction of their wealth on their favorite horse, it told the world that competitiveness, individualism, and materialism were the core elements of gentry values.[6]
Religion and Sport
Christianity somewhat limited early sporting events in Colonial America as a result of dissenting reformers like the Puritans who did not hold the same views as the Anglican Church. Where the Anglican Church held positive views towards sporting events, Calvinist principles shifted the positions the reforming Protestant's held on sports. This led to more restrictive approaches to sport where the only tolerated events needed to be done "for sober, practical purposes" such as military maneuvers. It took until the late nineteenth century for this "religious prohibitionism" to flip in the opposite direction. It was then that Protestants began to see sport as having more "spiritual and moral value" which was embodied through organizations such as the Young Men's Christian Association, also known as the YMCA.[7]
Early 19th century
Slave plantations
On the large slave plantations, the popular male sports were wrestling, boxing, racing, hunting, and fishing. The most popular recreations for women were dancing and singing. David Wiggins says the masters typically tolerated the slaves' pastimes as long as they were ready to work when called upon.[8] The slave children improvised their games. Girls, for example, favored "ring dances," accompanied by songs and riddles.[9]
Horse racing remained the leading sport in the 1780–1860 era, especially in the South.[10] It involved owners, trainers and spectators from all social classes and both races. However, religious evangelists were troubled by the gambling dimension, and democratic elements complained that it was too aristocratic, since only the rich could own very expensive competitive horses. The Civil War devastated the wealth needed to support the sport in the South. Thoroughbred racing revived in the North in the 1870s. Elite jockey clubs operated the most prestigious racetracks. They soon faced competition from profit-oriented proprietary racetracks especially in resort towns such as Saratoga Springs New York. Gambling was legal at the track, but an even larger amount was wagered off-track by unlicensed bookies, often backed by criminal syndicates. Moral opposition led by evangelical Protestants and social reformers led nearly all states to close their tracks by 1910. Much of the spectator attention shifted to automobile racing, where technology was central rather than gambling. Some tracks had both automobile and horse racing. One example was the Pennsboro Speedway, which opened for horse racing in 1887, and added automobile racing in 1926. It was the original home of the Hillbilly 100 from 1967 to 1998; the track became obsolete and closed in 2002.[11]
Horse racing made its comeback in the 1920s, as state governments legalized on-track betting which provided a welcome new flow of state revenues from a voluntary activity without imposing compulsory taxes on all citizens. By the 1950s, more people attended horse races than any other sport. Since the late 20th century, horse racing has struggled against competition from other sports and casinos.[12]
Cricket was imported from Britain to the United States, and accounts vary as to its popularity in early America. John Thorn, official historian of the MLB, says that in the 1850s, both cricket and baseball were considered the "national pastimes".[13] Regardless, it declined in popularity after the Civil War, with baseball replacing it as the national bat-and-ball game. This decline occurred for a number of reasons; cricket was considered too long to play, requiring a few days to play, and it was resisted on nativist grounds as being of British origin, with baseball being considered a more suitable American-origin replacement.[14]
During the New Deal of 1933–39, public sports facilities were upgraded and expanded with large sums of relief money. The CWA, WPA, and CCC were large nationwide relief projects that typically favored collaboration with local government, which often provided the plans and the site, as well as the materials and the heavy equipment, while the federal government provided the labor. Building new recreational facilities in public parks fit the model, and tens of thousands of recreation and sports facilities were built in both rural and urban areas. These projects had the main goal of providing jobs for the unemployed, but they also played to a widespread demand at the time for bodily fitness and the need for recreation in a healthy society. Roosevelt was a strong supporter of the recreation and sports dimension of his programs. The WPA spent $941million on recreational facilities. including 5,900 athletic fields and playgrounds, 770 swimming pools, 1,700 parks, and 8,300 recreational buildings. WPA spent an additional $229million on sports and recreational staff workers.[15][16]
Manliness
1961 President John F. Kennedy throws out the first ball in opening day.
Organized sports played a major role in defining new models of manliness by the mid-19th century. Boxing was professionalized, and emphasized the physical and confrontational aspects of masculinity.[17] Bare-knuckle fighting without gloves represented "the manly art" in 19th century America.[18] Historian Steven Elliott Tripp has explored the reaction of fans to Ty Cobb, the most dominant American baseball star of the early 20th century. He was "a player fans loved to hate," so much so that he became the pioneer sports celebrity.[19] It was the male fans who responded enthusiastically to how Cobb demonstrated in action a new level of modern masculinity. Cobb did that by his performance as a specialist in his art, a man with iron nerve, undaunted, fighting to advance his team and his career by crushing his weaker, less-masculine opponents. Cobb demonstrated raw emotion and encouraged his audience to participate in the manly struggle underway in the stadium by shouting their taunts and jeers at the opposing team.[20]
Minorities seek a role
In the early 20th century, elite male and female athletes were being coached by men. Women coaches at the collegiate level developed an alternative to the highly competitive masculine model of sport in the 1920s. They created "play days" for women during which participation, cooperation, and social interaction were more the focus than victory and defeat. The motto was: ‘Play With Us, Not Against Us.’ This mode of sport also represented an effort by female administrators to obtain more control over women's athletic activity with a feminist perspective.[21]
At the sixty or so historically black colleges, such as Howard University in Washington and Fisk University in Nashville, students and alumni developed a strong interest in athletics during the 1920s and 1930s. Sports were expanding rapidly at state universities, but very few black stars were recruited there. Race newspapers hailed athletic success as a demonstration of racial progress. Black schools hired coaches, recruited and featured stellar athletes, and set up their own leagues.[22][23]
Nancy Lopez is currently the youngest golfer ever to be inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame.
A baseball color line existed from 1887 until Jackie Robinson broke the barrier and became the first black player in modern professional baseball in 1947; even before 1887, black baseball players in organized baseball were rare. Black players generally played in Negro league baseball, in leagues of varying stability and caliber. Black players in professional American football were somewhat more common, as the sport was predominantly white but integrated (including blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans—among them Olympic superstar Jim Thorpe and others from his alma mater Carlisle Indian School—and Asians) from its beginnings; George Preston Marshall was able to enforce a 13-year color barrier on the National Football League from 1933 to 1946 and continued to refuse to sign black players to his own team, the Washington Redskins, until 1962. NFL integration in the late 1940s came as professional football was brought to California, where college and professional teams remained fully integrated; when the NFL placed its first team (the Los Angeles Rams) in the state in 1946, it was obligated to integrate, and did so by signing college superstar Joe Aguirre, Kenny Washington and future acting star Woody Strode. One of the most notable events involved the 1956 Sugar Bowl. The game was played shortly after the Rosa Parks event and much controversy preceded the game. Segregationists tried to keep Pitt fullback/linebacker Bobby Grier from playing because he was black. Georgia's governor publicly threatened the Georgia Tech's president Blake R. Van Leer to cancel the game. Ultimately, Bobby Grier played making this the first integrated Sugar Bowl and is regarded as the first integrated bowl game in the Deep South.[24] The first Latino quarterback to win a Super Bowl, Jim Plunkett, and seven years later Doug Williams became the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. The first Latino coach to win a Super Bowl, Tom Flores, also did so before the first black coach, Tony Dungy, won a Super Bowl and the first Latino player in the league.
U.S. Olympics medalist Sandi Morris during a pole vault event
The market for professional sports in the United States in 2012 is $69billion (about 50% larger than that of all of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined.)[26]
Mikaela Shiffrin with two Olympic gold medals, three World Championships, and 66 World Cup wins (and counting), Mikaela Shiffrin is one of the best Alpine skiers in history.
Nearly all sports in the United States were forced to completely halt operations during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States beginning in March 2020. Individual sports such as golf, mixed martial arts and auto racing were the first to resume operations in May, with baseball, ice hockey and basketball following in July, without fans in attendance. The breadth and length of the cancellations was unprecedented in American history, as even during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, sports continued to be played with fans (only the 1919 Stanley Cup was canceled midway through due to the illness hitting one of the teams; baseball was played as normal as the peak of the flu season hit during the offseason, while football, still in its unorganized regional phase at the professional level, played reduced schedules).
See also
Alex Morgan being challenged by Hikari Takagi (15) during a match against Japan in Cleveland on June 5, 2016. During the 2019 FIFA Women's Soccer World Cup, Morgan netted a record-breaking five goals in a single game
↑ Quoted in Nancy L. Struna, "The Formalizing of Sport and the Formation of an Elite: The Chesapeake Gentry, 1650-1720s." Journal of Sport History 13#3 (1986) p 219. onlineArchived 2017-08-22 at the Wayback Machine
↑ Struna, The Formalizing of Sport and the Formation of an Elite pp 212–16.
↑ Timothy H. Breen, "Horses and gentlemen: The cultural significance of gambling among the gentry of Virginia." William and Mary Quarterly (1977) 34#2 pp: 239–257. online
↑ David Wiggins, "Good Times On the Old Plantation: Popular Recreations Of The Black Slave in Antebellum South, 1810—1860." Journal of Sports History 4#3 (1977): 260–284. in JSTOR
↑ David K. Wiggins, "The Play of Slave Children in the Plantation Communities of the Old South." Journal of Sport History 7#2 (1980) online
↑ Kenneth Cohen, "Well Calculated for the Farmer: Thoroughbreds in the Early National Chesapeake, 1790–1850," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 115.3 (2007): 371–412. online
↑ Dave Tabler, "Dirt racing at Pennsboro" [Appalachian History Sept. 28, 2011]
↑ Steven Riess, "The Cyclical History of Horse Racing: The USA's Oldest and (Sometimes) Most Popular Spectator Sport." International Journal of the History of Sport 31#1–2 (2014): 29–54.
↑ John Wong, "FDR and the New Deal on Sport and Recreation." Sport History Review 29#2 (1998): 173–191 at p 181.
↑ Donald S Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy, (1943) pp. 127, 130.
↑ Christopher David Thrasher, Fight Sports and American Masculinity: Salvation in Violence from 1607 to the Present (2015).
↑ Elliott J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (1986).
↑ Steven Elliott Tripp, Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood (2016) pp 256, 267.
↑ Hunter M. Hampton, review of Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood by Steven Elliott Tripp, in The Journal of American Culture 41#1 (2018).
↑ Lynn E. Couturier, "‘Play With Us, Not Against Us’: The Debate About Play Days in the Regulation of Women's Sport." International Journal of the History of Sport 25#4 (2008): 421–442.
↑ Patrick B. Miller, "To “bring the race along rapidly": Sport, student culture, and educational mission at historically black colleges during the interwar years." History of Education Quarterly 35#2 (1995): 111–133.
↑ Patrick B. Miller and David Kenneth Wiggins, eds. Sport and the color line: Black athletes and race relations in twentieth-century America (Psychology Press, 2004).
Daniel, Bruce. Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England (1996) excerpt
Eisen, George Eisen and David K. Wiggins, eds. Ethnicity and Sport in North American History and Culture (1995) excerpt, scholarly essays on Indians, Germans, Irish, Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Japanese, Italians
Gerdy, John R. Sports: The All-American Addiction (2002) online
Gorn, Elliott J. A Brief History of American Sports (2004)
Jackson III, Harvey H. ed. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Sports & Recreation (2011) online
Jay, Kathryn. More Than Just a Game: Sports in American Life since 1945 (2004). online
Daniel, Bruce. Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England (1996) excerpt
Struma, Nancy L. People of Prowess: Sport, Leisure, and Labor in Early Anglo-America (1996) excerpt
Wiggins, David K. Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes (2008); focus on 20 celebrities
Zeigler, Earle F. ed. American sport and physical education History to 1975) (1975) online
Zeigler, Earle F. ed. History and Status of American Physical Education And Educational Sport (2005) excerpt
Specific sports
Goldstein, Warren. Playing for keeps: A history of early baseball (Cornell University Press, 2014).
Hoffmann, Frank, Gerhard Falk, and Martin J. Manning. Football and American identity (Routledge, 2013).
Riess, Steven. "The Cyclical History of Horse Racing: The USA's Oldest and (Sometimes) Most Popular Spectator Sport." International Journal of the History of Sport 31#1–2 (2014): 29–54.
Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. Baseball: An illustrated history (1996).
Race
Martin, Charles H. "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow in Southern College Sports: The Case of the Atlantic Coast Conference." North Carolina Historical Review 76#3 (1999): 253–284. in JSTOR
Historiography
Pope, S.W. ed. The new American sport history: recent approaches and perspectives (U of Illinois Press, 1997
Zeigler, Earle F. ed. History and Status of American Physical Education And Educational Sport (2005) excerpt
Primary sources
Wiggins, David K. and Patrick B. Miller, eds. The Unlevel Playing Field: A Documentary History of the African American Experience in Sport (2005) excerpt
Sports in Japan are a significant part of Japanese culture. Both traditional sports such as sumo and martial arts, and Western imports like baseball, association football, basketball and tennis are popular with both participants and spectators.
The history of sports extends back to the Ancient world in 7000 BCE. The physical activity that developed into sports had early links with warfare and entertainment.
Sports in Canada consist of a wide variety of games. The roots of organized sports in Canada date back to the 1770s, culminating in the development and popularization of the major professional games of ice hockey, lacrosse, basketball, baseball, soccer, football and cricket. Canada's official national sports are ice hockey and lacrosse. Golf, baseball, tennis, skiing, ringette, badminton, cricket, volleyball, cycling, swimming, bowling, rugby union, canoeing, curling, squash, and the study of martial arts are widely enjoyed at the youth and amateur levels. Great achievements in Canadian sports are recognized by Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, while the Lou Marsh Trophy is awarded annually to Canada's top athlete by a panel of journalists. There are numerous other Sports Halls of Fame in Canada.
In the United States, a sportsbook or a race and sports book is a place where a gambler can wager on various sports competitions, including golf, football, basketball, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, horse racing, greyhound racing, boxing, and mixed martial arts. The method of betting varies with the sport and the type of game. In the US, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 allowed only Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Delaware to legally wager on sports other than horse racing, greyhound racing, and jai alai; the law was ruled unconstitutional on May 14, 2018, freeing states to legalize sports betting at their discretion.
Sports in the United States are an important part of the nation's culture. Historically, the national sport has been baseball. However, in more recent decades, American football has been the most popular sport in terms of broadcast viewership audience. Basketball has grown into the mainstream American sports scene since the 1980s, with ice hockey and soccer doing the same around the turn of the 21st century.
Sports in Hong Kong are a significant part of its culture. Due to British influence going as far back as the late 19th century, Hong Kong had an earlier introduction to Western athletics compared to other Asia regions.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to sports:
Sports in the New York metropolitan area have a long and distinguished history.
Sport is an important part of the culture of Western Australia.
Sports in Pennsylvania includes numerous professional sporting teams, events, and venues located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
New Orleans is home to a wide variety of sporting events. Most notable are the home games of the New Orleans Saints (NFL) and the New Orleans Pelicans (NBA), the annual Sugar Bowl, the annual Zurich Classic and horse racing at the Fair Grounds Race Course. New Orleans has also occasionally hosted the Super Bowl, College Football Playoff semifinal game and the NCAA college basketball Final Four.
Sport plays an important role in the business, community, social and cultural life in the state of South Australia.
Sports in Saskatchewan consist of a wide variety of team and individual games, and include summer, winter, indoor, and outdoor games. Saskatchewan's cold winter climate has ensured the popularity of sports including its official sport, curling, as well as ice hockey, ice skating, and cross-country skiing. The province also has warm summers and popular summer sports include baseball, football, soccer, basketball, track and field, rodeo, horse-racing, and golf.
Sports in Charlotte, North Carolina have a long and varied history. The city is home to teams at nearly every level of American sports including the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League and Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association. In addition to serving as the home base for several teams the city plays host to many events of national and international importance including the longest race in NASCAR, the annual Coca-Cola 600 and golf's Wells Fargo Championship.
Upstate New York is a storied region in North American athletics.
Sports in Atlanta has a rich history, including the oldest on-campus NCAA Division I football stadium, Bobby Dodd Stadium, built in 1913 by the students of Georgia Tech. Atlanta also played host to the second intercollegiate football game in the South, played between the A&M College of Alabama and the University of Georgia in Piedmont Park in 1892; this game is now called the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry. The city hosts college football's annual Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and the Peachtree Road Race, the world's largest 10 km race. Atlanta was the host city for the Centennial 1996 Summer Olympics, and Downtown Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park was built for and commemorates the games.
The history of Canadian sports falls into five stages of development: early recreational activities before 1840; the start of organized competition, 1840–1880; the emergence of national organizations, 1882–1914; the rapid growth of both amateur and professional sports, 1914 to 1960; and developments of the last half-century. Some sports, especially ice hockey, lacrosse, curling, and ringette enjoy an international reputation as particularly Canadian. Although typically thought of as American, the origin of the sport of baseball began the Canadian town of Beachville, Ontario, and American football was initially developed by Canadians at McGill University before two different playing styles emerged, American football and Canadian football. Canadian sports attract large numbers of participants and huge audiences; hockey, played by 1.4 million Canadians, has become part of the national identity.
The city of Dallas and the Dallas metropolitan area are home to teams in six major sports: the Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Mavericks, Texas Rangers, Dallas Stars, FC Dallas, and Dallas Wings.
The North American continent is the birthplace of several organized sports, such as basketball, charrería/rodeo, gridiron football, ice hockey, jaripeo/bull riding, lacrosse, ollamaliztl, mixed martial arts (MMA), racquetball, ultimate, and volleyball. The modern versions of baseball and softball, skateboarding, snowboarding, stock car racing, and surfing also developed in North America.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
