John M. Carroll, Red Grange and the Rise of Modern Football, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999, Pp. vii+265. US$26.50 cloth. ISBN 0-252-02384-6.
Harold Grange is a revered hero in the American sporting pantheon. Known as "The Galloping Ghost" for his ability to "run like the wind," Grange recently placed 28th in ESPN's fin de siecle list of North American "Athletes of the Century" (occupying a hallowed space between basketball stars Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Larry Bird and, surprisingly, eleven places ahead of the National Football League's all-time leading rusher Walter Payton).
John Carroll, Regents' Professor of History at Lamar University and biographer of Fritz Pollard (an African American athlete, coach, and entrepreneur between the 1910s-30s) commences the biography with a pivotal, much-celebrated game in 1924. Grange's performance that day is still regarded by many football "experts" as one of the greatest single-day athletic feats in the annals of American sport. Grange's squad vanquished a heavily-favored University of Michigan team (which had been unbeaten in over two seasons) before over 77,000 spectators. Buoyed by his heralded gridiron exploits and newfound fame, Grange signed a contract with the Chicago Bears, a franchise in the fledgling professional circuit known as the National Football League. In the stroke of a pen, the 21-year old Grange scandalized collegiate athletics as a star player who willingly forfeited a year's amateur eligibility within the more respectable realm of collegiate sport to play for pay in the then disreputable environs of the professional firmament.
The controversial career decision made Grange the highest paid athlete in the U.S. in 1925 (Grange and his agent split over $250,000 that first year alone). Wearing raccoon coats and driving shiny luxury automobiles, Grange played the part of a 1920s national celebrity with all flourish and extravagence (and even starred in two silver screen productions). Grange brought much needed national publicity (and legitimacy) to pro football as millions of people read extensive newspapers accounts and as some sportswriters covered pro football for the first time. In spite of the ensuing recriminations and character assassinations, college football coaches searched for the next Red Grange who might bring prominence to their programs and fill their newly built stadiumsall of which merely intensified the further professionalization of "amateur" sport.
Yet, putting aside the highly publicized 1924 and 1925 seasons, Grange was a solid, but not exceptional professional player. How, then, do we explain his enduring stature as a sports hero both past and present? Carroll documents how, after retirement as a player, Grange became an immensely popular sports broadcaster between 1934 and 1969 and, thereby, re-emerged as a celebrity for a new generation of sports fans. Whilst it was a national television contract that eventually made the NFL a truly major league, it was Grange who put professional football on the American sports map. Yet, Grange's heroism derives from his athletic career.
In this carefully researched and lucidly written biography, Carroll demonstrates convincingly that Grange as sport hero-celebrity was a contingent product of historically fortuitous developments in journalism, publicity, transportation, photography, radio, and film which, collectively, created an environment (the emergence of mass culture) in which an obscure individual could become an instant celebrity. The big city sportswriters saw in Grange humble, rawboned qualities which represented a throwback to a simpler era. Carroll shrewdly debunks such mythical constructsGrange's hometown was a mere one hour drive from Chicago and his family income was well above the national working class averagebut acknowledges the staying power of Red's self-effacing public personna as well as the throwback photographic images (e.g. Grange carrying large blocks of ice as a young man working for an ice company). In truth, Grange did little to discourage this symbolic image of rugged individualism and traditional values which worked to his advantage in an era in which rural and urban values were often in conflict in a society dominated by machines, corporations, and bureaucracieswhat Benjamin Rader termed 20 years ago, a "compensatory" function reconciling "traditional" American values with an emergent corporatist culture. Carroll's study both affirms and problematises Rader's influential analysis. Had he ventured a bit more explicit analysis on this critical issue, Carroll could have demonstrated precisely how Grange became a heroic archetype who represented qualities and characteristics not only valued by society but seen by contemporaries and succeeding generations as having major instrumental power.
Carroll's sober, judicious biography advances our understanding of the creation of a prominent hero during the important moment which gave rise to America's "Golden Age" of sport. However, for readers of this journal, Carroll could have usefully contextualised his study (with at least some cross-cultural historiographical connections in the endnotes) within a broader, international framework. In their 1996 edited collection, European Heroes: Myth, Identity, Sport, Richard Holt and J.A. Mangan lamented how the varieties and purposes of sporting heroism are rarely examined by historians who tend to describe but not sufficiently analyse how a hero's style and performance "becomes linked as an emblem of a wider community" (my emphasis).
Broadening his historiographical scope to engage the European scholarship as well as important recent works in American cultural and sport history would have enabled Carroll to bolster his argument that sporting heroes are not simply constructed by the sports media (an important point indeed). As Holt and Mangan argue, unlike other popular cultural entertainers, athletes must enact contested, live, spontaneous, unrepeatable performances for their keep. Although many athletes had greatness thrust upon them by journalists, former players, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts whose "worship of the performance naturally crossed over into worship of the performer" (Holt and Mangan) their infatuation derived from the performance itself. As such, performance is the very crux of sport. Grange's ability to shimmy his hips and become an evasive "streak of fire, a breath of flame" (Grantland Rice) takes us, as Stephen Hardy argues, into "the heart of body culture, with its battles to convert physical capital into cultural, social, or economic capital"reminding us that style and performance are intimately connected to the material forces of production and consumption in society. As such, all future biographers of athletes renowned for stylistic performances and "heroic" characteristics might take note.
S. W. Pope
Champaign, Illinois, USA
Mike Cronin, Sport and Nationalism in Ireland: Gaelic Games, Soccer and National Identity Since 1884, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999, Pp. 214. £35 (hbk) £14.95 (pbk). ISBN 1-85182-408-1 (hbk) 1-85182-456-1 (pbk).
As a rare excursion by a social scientist into the world of Irish sport, this volume will be welcomed, and read enthusiastically, by many. Its neat structure and often very quotable prose will in turn reward readers for their efforts. The book's introduction is used to emphasise that sport, as an essentially popular pursuit, is `the ideal vehicle to use to establish an understanding and appreciation of how Irish nationalism has been formed and has functioned.' (pp. 18-9). It also lays out the tenets of the coming arguments regarding sport and nationalism in Ireland. The main proceedings of the book then open with a section on nationalism, in which a definition of terms is joined by a review of the existing historiographical debate on the nature of Irish nationalism. The essential conclusion to be drawn, is that Irish nationalism remains a varied and multifaceted entity.
The second chapter then looks at sport, and especially the roles it can play in modern society. The boosting of national prestige and the promotion of social cohesion are highlighted here, alongside the possible relationships between sport and nationalism. The net is cast much wider than either the nations or sports mentioned in the work's title, and an important distinction is also well made between nationalism as `a political force' and the `discourse' of politics themselves (p. 52). The discussion then moves on again, this time to the area of Gaelic games. Short histories of the sports of Gaelic football and hurling are offered, alongside an attempt to delineate the wider context in which the games are played today. Thus begins the treatment of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the administrative body overseeing these sports. The author notes its existence as a proto-political body almost from its inception. An affiliation between the Association and nationalist politics of varying hues then progressed through the constitutionalism of Parnell, the rising of 1916, the conservatism of the Irish Free State, and beyond. An examination of the role of the Association in constructing and reinforcing an Irish national identity dependent upon a ruralist, Catholic and anti-British ideal, leads almost seamlessly into a short discussion of the exclusionist policies of the Association.
The chapter on soccer follows a similar pattern, giving first a short history of the game in Ireland, before examining its relationship with Irish national identity. The main bulwark of the argument here is that, despite its introduction to Ireland in the 1880s, a wider acceptance of the game had to wait until the 1980s, when international success culminated in a greater general enthusiasm for the sport. This, it is suggested, is also symptomatic of the latest twist in the nature of Irish nationalism. As the Republic of Ireland has moved towards becoming a modern secular state, with a growing non-agricultural economy, and a secure European and international role, so soccer with its international dimensions, and profile of success, has become capable of displacing isolationist Gaelic games from their predominant position as a focus for national identity.
In contrast to this situation is the assessment offered of Northern Ireland. Here the Gaelic Athletic Association has retained its apparent position as the sporting arm of a more intransigent brand of nationalism, due both to the attitudes of some of its members there, and those of its political opponents. Soccer meanwhile has been stifled as a potential common focus for identification by a number of factors. Amongst these are the conflicting national identities that exist in the north, and the sectarianism that exists within the soccer community.
A brief conclusion follows, which again stresses the importance of sport as a vehicle for nationalism, and also its study as potentially offering new light on this area. A last entreaty to `explore the sporting history of Ireland' (p. 190) acts as a culmination of the work.
As far as it goes, this book is a relative success. It explores questions of sport and national identity in Ireland with some assiduousness, and brings in a number of worthwhile and rewarding comparisons. Its arguments, on the evidence its offers, are coherent and convincing. However, like any other book it is not without its faults. Despite the author's easy style, there are a number of grammatical and typographical errors which could confuse. Some discussion in the preliminary chapters also seems rather mechanical, and even superfluous. More worrying though are possible gaps in the arguments, which may to some extent undermine the validity of some of the interim conclusions. The suggestion that Irish rugby was never troubled by politics (pp. 21-2) ignores a plethora of evidence to the contrary. Not least was the incident in 1954 which led to the abandonment of future international matches in Belfast. Prior to this questions had been raised in the Free State's Senate as to the status of the game in Ireland; and prior to the Great War the season was abandoned in Ulster due to paramilitary activity on the part of players. The suggestion that in 1914 soccer remained the `preserve of people who identified themselves with the Union' (p. 121) would perhaps be refuted by men such as Oscar Traynor, the military strategist of the anti-Treaty IRA in Dublin in 1922, and the former professional goalkeeper for Belfast Celtic. A number of complexities seem to have been passed over to allow an easy access to a desired conclusion.
That is not to say that this book does not have its uses, or that it is unreliable. The major conclusions do still ring irrefutably true. It is also an accessible text that undergraduates will warm to. For historians of Irish sport it will provide a necessary point of reference, and for sociologists it will give access to not only the wider historiographical debates, but also exciting comparisons over time and territory.
In his introduction (p. 15) the author takes care to state that this book `is not an Irish equivalent of Richard Holt's Sport and the British.' It is certainly not that, nor does it aim to be on any level. Rather than being a synthesis of existing empirical work, overlaid with ideas and concepts of a broader nature that then allow the various labours of many to take on a coherent corporate form, this work is rather an attempt to place a complex sociological construct on a very limited, and often unreliable, historiographical base. The result is a work that is formidable on one level, but which may ultimately be undermined at its roots. One of the abiding messages that should be drawn from this work is that final exhortation to further work on sports history in Ireland. As this book shows, the results can be very rewarding.
Neal Garnham
University of Sunderland
Allen Guttmann, The Erotic in Sports, New York: Columbia University Press, New York, 1996, Pp. 256, $29.50 ISBN 0231105568.
Among historians of sport, Allen Guttmann evinces an unparalleled sense of venture. His appetite for exploration has been demonstrated in pioneering studies such as From Ritual to Record (1978) and Sports Spectators (1984), while in Women's Sports: A History (1991) Guttmann immersed himself in a topic that few of his male peers have had the courage to engage. These admirable qualities of discovery and fortitude are again apparent in the author's latest volume.
The Erotic in Sports is a complex book, but so too is its subject matter. Guttmann argues persuasively that eroticism and sexuality in sport ought to be pursued from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. To his dismay, however, few scholars in Sports Studies have considered these themes to be significant to our understanding of physical culture. Sports psychologists have shown little interest in the erotic appeal of athletes, while sports sociologists (though prominent in discussions of masculinity, femininity, and the `sexualisation' of modern sport) have been reluctant to examine the strength and diversity of erotic feelings and experiences in various sporting contexts. Guttmann contends that serious discussion of these human responses has been thwarted by an unlikely consensus between conservatives, radicals, and feminists. Each of these groups (albeit for different reasons) has tended to view sexual excitement in sport as a problematic diversion from the `proper' values and principles that, as they see it, ought to underpin physical culture. Guttmann's difficult task, therefore, has been to bring scholarly rigour to a subject that many academics prefer not to discuss.1
Guttman is particularly effective in providing historical perspective about the place of eros in various physical cultures. Using examples from societies as diverse as ancient Greece, medieval England, and modern America, he demonstrates the persistence of sexual expression and feelings through sport. Quite obviously, naked or scantily clad athletes could be objects of sexual desire, but Guttmann also emphasises that fantasies about athletes can stem as much from performance as appearance _ with the observer imagining the `great athlete' as a `great lover'. In reality, however, there is no reason to suggest that athletes are indeed exceptional lovers; indeed, anecdotal testimony often suggests the reverse. Sports stars are, of course, hardly alone here: movie stars may act out a sexy role on screen but be uncomfortable between the sheets; likewise romantic poets may compensate for a lack of sexual activity by writing about it. As for historians of sexuality who can say?
While Guttmann rightly trumpets the significance of sexual arousal through sport, he admits that sport has also been used to try to dampen such feelings. Most notably, the elite English public schools championed sport as a means of instilling discipline in boys, both on the field and in the change rooms. Physically exhausted, well drilled schoolboy athletes were thought less likely to indulge in homosexual behaviour. But their firm grip on cricket bats and rowing blades seems to have been matched, all too often for schoolmasters, by a firm hold on each other's appendage.
Given Guttmann's determination to bring sport and sexuality to the forefront of scholarly debate it is therefore no surprise that his book focuses on behaviour and feelings that accentuate arousal. With this in mind, however, Guttmann may need to rethink an aspect of his brief discussion about drugs, muscularity, and sex appeal. Men (and some women) have used anabolic steroids to increase their muscle mass in an effort to be more physically attractive to others. Guttmann explains that in general terms athletic women are `more likely to seek athletic men', and that in order to meet such expectations `men are far more likely than women to resort to drugs' (p.171). These male `users frequently justify their behaviour by saying that they want to improve their sports performance and make themselves physically more attractive to the opposite sex' (p.172). Well, steroids may improve male sports performance but they often have a downside in terms of sexual performance. Chronic users can suffer a reduction in the size of their genitalia (which is contrary to the aesthetic ideal of `big is better'); while in some cases male athletes who look like `Greek Gods' are only able to raise a sweat when a more specific feat of human engineering is expected. Anecdotal evidence even points to male-female relationships where it is understood that only a limited range of sexual activities are possible; in this sense the male subjects' appearance of sexual allure in public is deemed more important than their performance of sex in private.
Finally, a tribute to the work of the historian who gives us The Erotic in Sports. The length and scope of Guttman's research, as well as his capacity to engage both past and present in the cause of knowledge, are to be marvelled at. Scholars immersed in narrow, specialised areas of Sports Studies should read this book and dare to be different.
Daryl Adair
Centre for Sports Studies
University of Canberra
Nick Hayes and Jeff Hill (eds.), Millions Like Us? British Culture In The Second World War, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999, Pp. x + 342. £27.95 (hbk) ISBN 0-85323-763-8 £13.95 (pbk) ISBN 0-85323-773-5.
This collection comprises an eclectic group of essays that seek to assess the nature of popular culture in Britain during the Second World War. All forms of popular culture, including sport and recreation, politics and notions of Britishness come together to weave a picture of Britain at a time of great social upheaval. This collection is a fascinating examination into an area of cultural history that has not previously been the subject of an in-depth historical study.
Both editors are well placed within their fields to produce such a work. Jeff Hill has published principally on aspects of sport and identity, especially in the north of England. Nick Hayes has published in areas of British culture including local politics, the press and architecture.
Millions Like Us attempts to advance the reader's understanding of changes affected by the War in Britain. Throughout the text, the overarching question the book seeks to address is did the war have an impact on, and therefore change popular culture in Britain irrevocably? As well as reviewing the duration of the war, the collection also examines the period immediately following the War. This gives evidence as to whether or not the shift in trends in popular culture were meaningful and long term, or occurred due to the unusual circumstances of war.
The book has a detailed introductory opening chapter by Nick Hayes and a denouement by Jeff Hill. Within these two essays, popular culture and the War is examined from women writers to miners holiday camps.
Recreation and sport are strongly represented in this book. In a well-written piece, `A More Even Playing Field? Sport During and After the War' Norman Baker examines issues of class and gender and tracks the changes wrought by the War on sport. From the closure of the separate changing rooms for professional and players at Lords to the opportunity for women in the Forces to participate in sport, this chapter reviews sporting issues during the war as well as the immediate post-war situation. Colin Griffin explores a specific case of provision for recreation by the Miners' Welfare Commission. In his essay Griffin examines the recreational opportunities provided by the Miners' Welfare Commission and how the war changed them, for instance the movement from outdoor to indoor recreation during the war, and the subsequent dilapidation of facilities for outdoor recreation generally. Jeff Hill's piece, `When Work is Over: Labour, Leisure and Culture in Wartime Britain' focuses on the hitherto little analysed topic of the Labour party and its views on leisure and culture. Hill cites the Labour Party's Manifesto of 1945 as having concerns with leisure down to a mere footnote. Hill argues that the Labour Party seemed little concerned with enlightenment in 1945, feeling that the War had caused cultural changes in Britain and that as a political party had little to offer to improve them further. Reconstruction of sport and leisure was not high on the agenda.
A cross section of contemporary media and popular entertainment is examined in depth. In James Chapman's chapter `British Cinema and the People's War', he argues that the role of the cinema was dual, as both entertainment and as also a propaganda vehicle supported by the government. The BBC is the subject of a piece by Sian Nicholas who explores its `mythology' during the war. In the chapter, `The People's Radio: the BBC and its Audience', Nicholas argues that the BBC set out and was successful in maintaining national unity. In `Was it the Mirror Wot Won it?' Michael Bromley examines the new innovation of the tabloid style newspaper. In `Safe and Sound: New Music in Wartime Britain' Robert Mackay discusses the influence of War upon the nations music. Mackay concludes that although the War had an affect on music, that this influence disappeared when the war ended. The impact of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts is deliberated by Nick Hayes in `More than Music-While-You-Eat? Factory and Hostel Concerts "Good Culture" and the Workers'. Johanna Alberti discusses notions of gender and class in `A Time for Hard Writers: the Impact of War on Women Writers'.
Britishness during the War is synthesised in an eloquently written piece by John Baxendale. In the essay Baxendale concludes that concepts of Britishness were open to discussion. The war was experienced on an individual level; the only unity was a refusal to allow their country to be occupied by an invading army.
Millions Like Us examines varied aspects of cultural life. By using these many examples and different issues, the contributors attempt to illustrate whether or not the War wrought changes to British life. Certain themes are present throughout each of the chapters. The class system is one example. It was perhaps a view shared by many that the War would irrevocably change entrenched structures such as the class system. In some spheres and for the duration of the War this did perhaps happen. But were these established structures substituted with a different rule? After the War, the class system, like many of the time-honoured structures, was firmly re-established.
During the unusual situation of a prolonged period of duress, and a war supposedly fought for the right ideals, was there any sense that this momentous event caused any major cultural shift in Britain, either during or in thelong-term? The central tenet to the thesis is that the war had a cultural impact in the short term, but more often the war maintained the status quo. Perhaps some seeds of cultural change were sown, which might account for the fact that there were more radical shifts later in the century.
J.P. Anderson
De Montfort University
Mike Huggins, Flat Racing and British Society, 1790-1914, London: Frank Cass, 2000, Pp. xv + 270, illustrations, bibliography, index. £42.50 ISBN 0-7146-4982-1 (hbk), £17.50 0-7146-8045-1 (pbk).
Horse racing was one of the few major spectator sports to have an organisation and structure, and set of rules, before the 19th Century. Various forms of football, foot racing and rowing and others were largely created or adapted in that century. However, Huggins shows here how the sport of racing and its governance evolved during the 19th century to the pattern we recognise today. The book is based on the most assiduous research in a host of archival and manuscript resources (many in the north of England), official papers (including those of the Jockey Club in Newmarket - for an academic to gain admission is a triumph in itself!) as well as an array of secondary sources. It is also adorned with 25 illustrations. The result is a thorough, scrupulous and fascinating story.
Racing horses has a long history and was well established before the Jockey Club was set up in the middle of the 18th Century. Over the course of the next hundred years racing became a `national' sport - a virtually single market developed with improved communications and newspaper coverage. Above all the electric telegraph in the 1850s brought rapid information that unified the betting market. Perhaps surprisingly it was only in the second half of the century that the Jockey Club was able (or willing perhaps) to exercise effective power beyond Newmarket, even though it had been guardian of the rules of racing for a hundred years before then. Earlier race meetings had been locally organised. Commercial interest came to the fore in the latter part of the century as racing adapted to an industrialising and urbanising society. And generally the sport prospered, despite opposition from various quarters.
The anti-gambling lobby was one of the strongest. Racing was nothing without betting, but that defied the work ethic. Opponents came from right and left on the political but few, Huggins claims, attended the races and they invariably exaggerated bookmakers' winnings. They had little effect. Betting on racing became one of the most common male leisure activities by 1914. Racing continued and grew because it drew support from all classes and was able to resist sectional interests. Not surprisingly royal patronage and support of the `upper' classes lent weight. But also the enhanced control especially with the advent of fully enclosed courses from the 1870s drew support from all social quarters.
This is a critical part of Huggins argument. The archetypal picture of middle class opposition to indulgence by the feckless aristocracy on the one hand, and guileless working classes on the other, is too simple, he maintains. Of course, there was much `middle class' opposition but as the author says, the critical point is how typical such groups really were. It was the middle classes and financial interests who, after all, led the way in the commercialisation of the sport (enclosed courses were heavily capitalised businesses). Local businessmen, aldermen and indeed bookmakers, helped to organise meetings, put up prizes and even came to own racehorses. Huggins argues that the extent of middle class support explodes the stereotypical ideas about middle class morality.
It is Huggins' view that much historical research has been on leisure activities that were under attack, such as blood sports. This has given the impression of a middle class hegemony and success in restricting such activities. But the middle class was far from unified. Racing appealed to all classes. In being able to resist critical pressure groups it revealed an ability of British society to achieve a broad social consensus and organise itself effectively for pleasure and reward. The racecourse brought different classes together in a common interest and provided an occasion of social mixing across class barriers, though the class distinctions were never removed. Are there suggestions here perhaps of the ideas recently put forward by the anthropologist Kate Fox in The Racing Tribe?
Any social history of Britain is bound to be concerned with social classes. But perhaps the emphasis on class as a basis for analysis has been overused. In questioning some of the stereotypes Huggins has raised new questions. This important book can therefore be read with interest and profit not only by those interested in horse racing and sports in general but also the broader social history of Britain.
Roger Munting
University of East Anglia
Grant Jarvie, Sport in the Making of Celtic Cultures, London: Leicester University Press, 1999, Pp. ix + 198. ISBN 0-7185-0129-2.
As an `Anglicised Celt' and ex-participant in and observer of the Hebridean Highland Games of my homeland, I had more than a passing interest in research into sports history which sets out to unpack `Celtic' cultural identity in terms of `content, history and place'. Although John Burnett in his Sporting Scotland, (1995) had suggested that there was a paucity of material on Scottish sports history, Grant Jarvie has regularly focused scholarly attention on the role of sport in those `Celtic' peoples seeking to assert an autonomous cultural identity including Scotland. It is perhaps no surprise that Grant Jarvie, author of The Highland Games: the Making of the Myth (Edinburgh, 1991), and after co-editing Scottish Sport in the Making of a Nation, (1994) was instrumental in bringing together leading specialists in socio-historical investigation to produce a lucid anthology of the contribution sport has made to `Celtic' culture and identity in what he describes as the `peripheral borderlands of Europe'. (p.2).
Geographically then, the influence of sport on Celtic identity is examined through Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany, reflecting on a diversity of sports including shinty, hurling, football, rugby, with a special emphasis on the Gaelic Athletic Associations of Ireland and Scotland. Accordingly chapters can be read individually, casually or in depth, making the work suitable for a wide range of scholars or for casual interest. To balance the `British' focus, two chapters are given over to the impact of sporting developments in Brittany, which examine the process of assimilation of and resistance to `British' forms of Celtic sports.
Despite a burgeoning interest in things `Celtic', many contributions to this volume are underpinned by a questioning of established perceptions towards `Celtic' identity, nationalism and mythology. A consensus emerges which alludes to sport as an intrinsic element of an assertive and autonomous cultural and national identity, which has had a role to play in the `imagining of a modern Europe.' (p.5). Consequently, the ethos of the book is a broadside to those scholars who have chosen to ignore or marginalise the role of the ancient and classical, or `residual sporting cultures', in the post-modern world of commercial sporting interests. Since much of this work is anchored around `national and personal identity', it is fitting that such concepts are thoughtfully re-examined and explored through specific case-studies. The `construction' of a `systematically patriarchal' but `egalitarian' Wales, for example, (pp.138-40), and its subsequent problems of adjustment in the `global' scheme, reminds us that `identities' are `complex, heterogeneous, contradictory and conceptual entities, drawn from discursive regimes which are themselves not `closed in time and space.' (p.131) The relationship between sport and politics in Ireland is similarly used to `illustrate the power of the past in the present,' a key focus of the anthology. `Civic' and `ethnic' nationalisms and their relationship with repressive `centre nationalisms' are taken up and presented as examples of how sports history can embrace forces and values whose impact is felt in recurrent ways. (pp.12-26)
Despite considerable areas of agreement, however, there are methodological differences between contributors with Alan Bairner's vision of Celtic sport in nineteenth century Ireland developing under the auspices of a broader Irish nationalism, whilst Marcus de Burca and Art O Maolfabhail focus on the influence of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the inspiration provided by individuals such as Michael Cossack. Gareth Williams authoritative and entertaining chapter on the uniqueness of Welsh identity and literature through its sporting heritage gave greater emphasis to Welsh history than other contributors to Welsh culture within the book.
Having a childhood in the midst of `Celtic' culture, with vague notions of Scottish separateness and boisterous `tribal identities', this book is in particular a cogent unravelling of the mysteries and place of Scottish popular culture. My own recollections included an intense `masculinity' within this Celtic world. Perhaps there is scope for more research into Scottish masculine identity in the construction of Celtic culture.
Callum C McKenzie
University of Strathclyde
David Pickup, Not Another Messiah: An Account of the Sports Council 1988-93, Bishop Auckland: Pentland Press, 1996, Pp. ix + 225. £14.99. ISBN 1-85821-392-4.
David Pickup was Director General of the Sports Council from 1988-93. He came to the post from a public service background outside of sports administration during a particularly tempestuous time for the organisation. Over the period three successive Conservative Ministers for Sport proposed major reviews of the Council's work and location (which finally took effect after Pickup left office), the National Lottery was introduced and government sought to reorient the work of the Council away from Sport for All to focus more exclusively on elite and youth sport. The account he provides of the period and the major policy themes provides insights into governmental predilections in sport, the contributions, ambitions and tactics of major figures (particularly ministers), and provides (often by implication only) an indication of the author's own personal and policy preferences.
The book is structured around five initial chapters dealing with each of the five years of the author's tenure, followed b two chapters which deal with what for him are the two key sets of issues during his period of office, the "push for independence" which covers the introduction of private, or quasi-private sector initiatives in the running of the Council's work, and the restructuring of British sports administration.
Not Another Messiah is Pickup's first book. The title is derived from the advice received when he was initially encouraged to apply for the post that the need was for an efficient administrator rather than "another Messiah". Occasionally, ironically, the text strays across the boundary from insightful account to promotion (often with messianic zeal) of policy options which were not necessarily pursued by his political masters. To take one example, ministers are berated for failing to stem the work of the sports Councils of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland in favour of a more British-centred and `efficient' solution to policy and finding problems. This says as much about the author's failure to appreciate the link between sport and national identity, and between sports governance and nationhood, as it does about the `partiality' of which he accuses Scots, Welsh and Irish administrators.
Among the most interesting features of the book is the author's evaluation of key policy actors. His view of Tory Ministers for Sport is freely expressed. Moynihan, energetic, he liked; Atkin, disinterested in sport, he did not; and Ian Sproat, a careerist, using sport as a springboard, he describes with particular distaste. Similarly candid opinions are offered about individual senior civil servants, and often stand in contrast to those about colleagues from within the Council who are generally described in positive terms. These views may be fully justified, and justification is often given, but there is little evident concern with impartiality _ this is definitively Pickup's own account. This also means that there is no attempt at maintaining a political neutrality. The neo-liberal philosophy of the Conservative government is treated with barely concealed contempt, as the following passage illustrates:
The steadily-growing army of the dispossessed was mildly embarrassing but could on the whole, be ignored or traduced for their own fecklessness. Individuals, we were told, had it within themselves to strive for and achieve, unprecedented standards of living. Failure was the result of personal inadequacy. (p. 151)
For historians of sports policy, the book covers much interesting ground. The introduction of the National Lottery and its support for sport is described in some detail, and described as accelerated by, if not stemming from, organised lobbying on the part of the Sports Council and its associates. Government responses to the bidding for major events are outlined in relation to the Sheffield World Student Games, and Manchester's Olympics bid. Heading a quango during a period of growing Conservative distaste for their unaccountability and implied inefficiency provided its own unique set of challenges and the author's account provides fascinating insights in this respect.
Ironically, one of the author's significant motives for writing the book appears to have been to place on record his defence for adopting a more entrepreneurial approach to the activities of the Council, in particular the establishing of a trading company as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sports Council Trust. This company was established so that the Council could preserve "its ability to function / independently of government" and that "ability would be strengthened by a demonstration of the Council's preparedness to augment its budgets by its own commercial endeavours" (pp. 155/6). An off-the-shelf company was bought by the author and his Director of Finance Ian Johnson, "in anticipation of the Council's decision to take a commercial initiative" and transferred for nil consideration to the Trust. The ensuing activities of the company (which provided profits for the Sports Council Trust) were to come under scrutiny by the Treasury, the Commons Public Accounts Committee, and by journalists, most notably Donald Trelford in the Daily Telegraph, all of whom the author deemed to have suggested that he was subject to as conflict of interest. The author's defence is clearly expressed, entirely plausible, and his motives for wishing to place it on public record are entirely understandable. He does however, undermine the objectivity of his own argument when he retaliates, criticising as hypocrisy the Public Accounts Committee's querying of conflicts of interests, since its own members have interests entered on the Commons Register of Members' Interests, and when he repeats the gratuitous insult of an independent witness to the National Heritage Committee that "Donald Trelford is proof that Snow White slept with Dopey".
The book provides an interesting account of what was inevitably a difficult time for those involved in running the Sports Council. It generates new and useful insider information, but it does suffer from a lack of critical reflection on the part of the author. Nevertheless if the material is treated as interesting secondary data and the author's analysis taken in the light of the position from which that analysis is conducted, the text is likely to be of real value to those with an interest in the historical development of sports policy under the Conservative governments of the period.
Ian Henry
Institute of Sport and Leisure Policy
Loughborough University
Steven A. Riess, Touching Base; Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999, Pp. x + 308. $49.95 (hbk), $18.95 (pbk), ISBN0-252-02467-2 (hbk), 0-252-06775-4 (pbk).
To have had a book republished as a revised edition is, in itself, an index of its success. Few authors are blessed with such access to attending to those niggling revisions that immediately appear all too often when they glimpse their pristine first editions. To update it is a bonus. Touching Base is a worthy update and revision of a book, first published in 1980. Steven Riess, also author of City Games, is one of the few historians of sport who has addressed explicitly the urban dimension of sports. A historian by training, Riess also displays a geographical sensibility to baseball in the American city. While largely symbolised as an image of rural or frontier America, baseball is essentially an urban sport. The book provides novel insights which are focused specifically on professional baseball in the USA during the `progressive era', that is between about 1880 and 1920. Given this focus, Touching Base is generally regarded as the definitive text on urban aspects of baseball's evolution.
Riess implicitly adopts the famous dictum of C.L.R. James: `What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?'. In other words, he is prepared to explore baseball in urban American within the broader contexts of the times. One will not understand baseball by simply studying baseball. His research borders on the meticulous. His use of city archives and a wide range of interdisciplinary sources is exemplary. He draws on sociologists and others whose work will be known to scholars outside history _ Burgess and Hoyt, each well known for their `models' of urban spatial structure, appear in his endnotes. It is also intriguing to note his reference to an interesting antecedent of American `sports geography' (whose `origin' is usually attributed to John Rooney in the late 1960s), a paper by Harvey Lehman from the Journal of Educational Research in 1940 on the geographic origin of professional baseball players. In exploring baseball's development he addresses urban politics, the impact of baseball parks on neighbourhood land values, the tensions surrounding baseball and social mobility, ethnicity and sport and the battles over Sunday baseball. I have few doubts that the author has achieved his aim in alerting his readership to the problems surrounding the development of baseball during the progressive era.
Touching Base provides excellent background to researchers involved in almost any aspect of sports in the city. It resonates with current political-economy and neo-marxist approaches to franchise relocation and stadium construction. There is nothing of any equivalence to this book in the UK where work on sports in the urban area remains very much underdeveloped both methodologically and substantively. European scholars could do worse than to utilise Riess's work as a template on which to base their research.
I am enthusiastic about this book and have few quibbles. Still unusual for a historian, Reiss includes several maps to inform his readers of the locational dimensions of baseball in his selected case study cities of Atlanta, Chicago and New York. Geographers might expect better quality maps, especially that of New York (page 106) which has no scale line. While the maps are well-integrated into the text, some first-class archive photographs occupy a discrete `section' in the body of the book and not cross-referenced in the text. But these criticisms are nit-picking and in no way seriously detract from a substantial academic achievement.
As I noted earlier, Riess's demonstration of interdiciplinarity is admirable. I cannot help feeling, however, that his book might have been even better if it had been informed by the work of urban and historical geographers. His generally meticulous gaze failed to detect a particularly insightful paper by the geographer Allan Pred that appeared in the Journal of Historical Geography in 1980. The title _ `Production, family and free-time projects: a time-geographic perspective on the individual and societal change in nineteenth century cities' _ failed to make clear that the example of `family and free-time projects' that Pred takes as his case study is, in fact, baseball. I make this point, not in the dubious spirit of point-scoring, but to address the question of the limits of interdisciplinarity study. None of us can read everything. Even a study like that of Riess can only go so far.
These comments are not intended to detract from a splendid book. They are simply to remind us of the inevitability of uncertainty about knowing everything about anything. This is something that authors rarely acknowledge. Touching Base is an excellent book that I will refer to regularly. It is one that all students of sport and urbanism should have on their bookshelves.
John Bale
Keele University
Ida M. Webb, The Challenge of Change in Physical Education: Chelsea College of Physical Education _ Chelsea School, University of Brighton 1989-1998, London: Falmer Press, 1999, Pp. x + 203. £19.95. ISBN 0-7507-0976-6.
This book is exactly as its title suggests a one hundred year history of the Chelsea School from 1898 to 1998. Ida Webb traces the history of the School and its personalities through her intimate knowledge of her subject and her time as a lecturer at the School.
Ida Webb has extensive experience within the field of physical education and its teaching. She has co-authored works on sport, and her doctoral research centred on the history of women and physical education in Britain. Webb is therefore well placed to write the history of one the oldest colleges of physical education for women in Britain.
The history is written in a linear fashion divided into sub headings that cover the School's foundation, transition, expansion, and eventual incorporation into Brighton Polytechnic. The purpose of the book is not only to trace the history of the Chelsea School within the last hundred years, but also to give a historical context to the role of the School in the training of physical education teachers. Often the difficulty with some institutional history is that the internal narrative can dominate, without giving the reader any notion of historical context or events beyond the subjects walls. Webb avoids this by examining what happened outside the domain of the School, and explains the significance of a whole series of external events and factors in relation to the institution. These include the effects that changes in educational legislation wrought upon the school, and the constantly evolving debates over what should constitute a programme of physical education. Periods of upheaval such as the two World Wars are discussed in relation to their impact on the School.
A central issue here is gender, and the place of women in a college designed exclusively to promote them in the world of school based physical education. While the role of women and their transforming place within physical education and the school is a central focus of the book, the understanding of who these women were, their socio-economic background and their destinations in society (apart from those who stayed at Chelsea) appears unimportant. It seems that the book overly focuses on the narrative of those women directly employed by the Chelsea school, and avoids covering the larger (and potentially more interesting) story of all the women who passed through its doors.1 As a result, the vital role of the Head of the School, their lives and personalities, forms the central part of the book.
Although it is difficult to discuss an institution in ways that readers may find meaningful, Webb manages this. Not only in her use of historical context, but also in anecdotes from past students. The subject is well researched and Webb has had access to a wealth of primary material from the School, which adds to the depth of the book. The text is highlighted with a few relevant photographs, which illustrate the work well. The first two sections of the book read very differently from the latter stages. In the same way that they dominated every aspect of School life, the early part of the text is dominated by the influence of the powerful, determined personality of the Head. As the college itself becomes more rigidly structured within an educational framework, the text becomes heavier with institutional language and lacks the anecdotes and narrative evidence that make the earlier chapters so readable. The lively characters that were the Head of the College becomes less important in relation to the institution itself, and the history of institutional management comes to the fore.
One hundred years is a long period of time in which to explain the ever changing role of the history of an institution, within the larger debates surrounding the role of women and the changing face of physical education. To look outside the walls of an institution, as well as within it, is a difficult task and Ida Webb has endeavoured to accomplish this.
J.P. Anderson,
De Montfort University.
1 I discovered how difficult this was a few years ago at a Sports Studies conference. I suggested that the relatively large percentage of women spectators at Australian Rules football could be explained, in part, by the sex appeal of the players (who are well developed physically, have arms and thighs uncovered, and tightly clad uniforms accentuating torso and buttocks). I was vilified by a vocal minority of conference delegates, who viewed me as patronising and degrading towards women. It did not help my cause that oral testimony for the female gaze had come from women themselves _ including my grandmother, my mother, and my wife.