Sports Biblio Digest, 1.31.16
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
In This Issue: Corruption in International Sports Governance; Remembering ‘Da Bears;’ February Sports Books; Transgender Athletes; and the Sports Biblio Podcast Debut
Welcome to the Sports Biblio Digest, an e-mail newsletter delivered each Sunday, free of charge. You can subscribe here and search the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 26, published Jan. 31, 2016. The Digest is a companion to the Sports Biblio website, which is updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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This week on the Sports Biblio blog
One of the key components I envisioned for Sports Biblio before I launched the site last fall was a podcast, with the idea of having conversations with sports books authors and historians.
After a few delays, I debuted that podcast this week in beta form. I’m still learning the basics of podcasting and it’s just my voice on this thing for now, so please pardon the unpolished product (you can also listen on SoundCloud; this will be on iTunes soon).
I’ve been listening a lot to sportswriters who’ve started podcasts and they’ve all said there’s much more to this than pushing the record button and running their mouths. That’s about where I am right now with this.
Two of the best in my business are trying their hand at podcasting on a daily basis, my acquaintances Dan Wetzel and Pat Forde at their Yahoo! Sports WTF (Wetzel to Forde) podcast. It’s very informal and humorous, befitting their personalities, and a fun listen in the mornings for me.
I just wanted to get started, give you a glimpse of my voice (don’t I sound like Lauren Bacall?) and push myself to get the hang of podcasting. I’m posting a new podcasting episode on the 2nd and 4th Friday of the month. New sports book reviews will continue to be posted on the 1st and 3rd Friday.
My goal is to begin the conversation format for the podcast in the spring, since there’s a learning curve and I’ve got a lot of freelancing work on my plate during the current college basketball season.
Also on the blog this week I wrote about the sportswriting of Ring Lardner Sr. and his eldest son, John Lardner, whose works have been anthologized in recent years. It’s such a treat to be able to read a wide selection of their work in one place, especially with many of their previous books out of print or hard to get.
Corruption in sports—reaching a tipping point?
The last year or so has been a monumental one for scrutiny of the governance of international sports, and it’s getting even more intense with a bombshell report by BBC and BuzzFeed UK about allegations of match-fixing in tennis.
That was quickly followed by reports that there have been suspicions of match-fixing at the Australian Open that’s ending this weekend.
Reports of doping in Russian track and field (athletics) were the subject of an investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which concluded that corruption was “embedded” in the International Association of Athletics Federations. Almost immediately, Adidas terminated its sponsorship deal with the IAAF in what’s being seen as a business decision.
Pressures from corporate sponsors have played a hand in the unraveling at FIFA, where longtime president Sepp Blatter has been banned for eight years (along with UEFA president Michel Platini) and other global soccer leaders have been indicted in a U.S. Justice Department investigation.
The controversial awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar is at the heart of the probe, and prompted the publication of “The Ugly Game,” which is out in paperback in early February. Co-author Heidi Blake, formerly of the Sunday Times of London staff, worked on the tennis match-fixing story.
WADA’s increasingly hardball tactics have rendered a crisis in Australian Rules Football, although there are calls to appeal a Court for the Arbitration of Sport ban against 34 players associated with the Essendon Bombers club. But a threatened separation from WADA would make the AFL “a laughing stock,” according to a columnist at The Age.
Cricket South Africa has issued a 20-year ban to spinner Gulam Bodi after he admitted to fixing or conspiring to fix Twenty20 matches.
And critics of the present-day Olympic movement have revved up their concerns in the wake of massive budget cuts by the Rio organizing committee, six months before the start of the 2016 summer games.
Do these sagas signal a change in how government authorities and the media are addressing corruption, doping and other malfeasance in global sports governance?
The Copenhagen-based organization Playing the Game, a clearinghouse for anti-corruption efforts in sports, thinks so, and is hopeful that these developments are heading toward changes that include “replacing autonomy in sport with ‘freedom of association.’ ”
The thinking goes that instead of sports governing bodies declaring that they’re above the law, or outside of public scrutiny, reforms would be based on notions of accountability and transparency. Fancy that.
ESPN’s Howard Bryant, author of a book about performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, was a bit pessimistic, writing that “the truth is that sports in 2016 are at their grayest.”
No surgery required for transgender athletes
The International Olympic Committee has revised its guidelines for participation by transgender athletes, who no longer need to have “reassignment” surgery before being cleared to compete.
While I don’t begrudge anyone making a very difficult decision to switch genders, what should it mean to be considered transgender in a sports context? A mere declaration, simply possessing a certain state of mind or desire?
Christina Kahrl, a transgender writer for ESPN.com, explains that this decision could affect American Chris Mosier, a female-to-male triathlete. What about biological males who identify as females and seek to compete with women?
The howling over the Caster Semenya saga was an argument that high T-counts in intersex women shouldn’t be a barrier to competition, that gender isn’t just about hormones. I agree. As David Epstein wrote in “The Sports Gene,” hormones are hardly the only differences between the sexes:
“It is now clear that the genetic advantage of men over women in most sports is so profound that the best solution is to separate them.”
Now the IOC is saying that all a transgender athlete has to do is get his or her hormonal counts to an acceptable level for a year, and shazzam! They’re good to go. This may sound like I'm oversimplifying but a plausible rationale for this change wasn't really given.
In most daily human activities, gender identity needn't have such strong markings. I applaud efforts to treat transgender people like everyone else. However, in sports, there are men, and there are women. The IOC has contributed to a blurring of a competitive line that may suit certain cultural and political sensibilities and appeal to understandable human rights concerns.
But this doesn’t do much to inspire confidence in protecting the competitive integrity of sports for women, and the silence about this aspect of the issue is troubling. I realize I may have an out-of-fashion view, but I’ve covered women’s sports for a couple of decades and I don’t see how in this can be considered progress for females in sports.
Countdown to Super Bowl 50: The 1985 Chicago Bears
It’s been 30 years since the Chicago Bears won their only Super Bowl, and on Thursday the ESPN “30 for 30” documentary film series is featuring that team, and what’s happened to them since (trailer here).
It’s an often-told story, including Rich Cohen’s 2013 book “Monsters,” and some subjects wondered what more they could say.
Director Jason Hehir had his work cut out for him getting interviews with former players, but Ed Sherman writes in the Chicago Tribune that it manages to be a “happy story,” culminating with a reunion this week at the film’s world premiere.
It’s been 25 years since Scott Norwood’s “Wide Right” at the Super Bowl. At SB Nation Longform, Brin-Jonathan Butler writes about the broken-hearted faithful fans of the Buffalo Bills who can’t forget.
At Sports Illustrated, Steve Rushin forecasts what Super Bowl 100 might be like; the magazine’s luminous Super Bowl photography has been recaptured on a special vertical created just for Super Bowl 50.
Newsday has compiled a list of special Super Bowl 50 commemorative books that are more than coffee book fare.
Charles Barkley thinks the media is fomenting racial divisiveness over Cam Newton’s “dab” dancing, and Jason Whitlock agrees with him. Money quote from the latter:
"Speculating about the motives of people who have a problem with Newton’s showboating isn’t smart or courageous. It’s low-hanging fruit disguised as fearlessness."
Sports Book News
February is a big month in the publishing industry in the U.S., and there are quite a few sports books included in the mix. Here’s a sample of what’s being published in the coming week:
The U.S. edition of “The Prehistories of Baseball,” by Irish writer Seelochan Beharry (MacFarland & Co.);
“Wounded Lions: Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, and the Crises in Penn State Athletics,” by Ronald Smith (Illinois);
“Puskas: Madrid, Magyars and the Amazing Adventures of the World’s Greatest Goalscorer,” by Gyorgy Szollosi (Freight Books);
“The First XV: A Selection of the Best Rugby Writing,” by Gareth Williams (Parthian Books, 2nd ed);
“Stumps and Runs and Rock N Roll: Sixty Years Beyond a Boundary,” by Tim Quelch (Pitch Publishing)
“This is Your Brain on Sports: The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry, and What We Can Learn from the T-Shirt Cannon,” by Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommers (Crown Archetype);
“Fast Into the Night: A Woman, Her Dogs, and Their Journey North on the Iditarod Trail,” by Debbie Clarke Moderow;
“Football Nomad,” by Dan Radakovich Sr. with Lou Prato (Nimble Books).
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