The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Football, and Basketball and What They See When They Do

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful read---pure pleasure and fascination
Review: I loved this book for its beautiful writing, the clarity of the author's thinking, and the way it showed me why people love sports. I've given it to my father, a big time sports fan, who adored it, and my grandmother, who has lived with a sports fan for more than 60 years, and she loved it, too. Whether you love sports or don't understand what the big deal is, this is a great read, pure pleasure. You'll learn a lot whether you started at zero or were very knowledgable to begin with. A great book by a great writer.

Rating:
Summary: Superb! A great mind applied to a great subject
Review: Michael Mandelbaum is not a sports writer. He's part of the Washington foreign policy establishment and a professor of International studies at Johns Hopkins University. So, while he is an academic he's neither an anthropologist nor a social historian. He is, obviously, an ardent sports fan. Knowing these facts helps to understand both why this book works and why it fails.

The book works superbly as an historical analysis. Even dedicated sports fans of the Big Three (football, baseball and basketball) will learn quite a bit about the development of their favorite sports as well as about the titans of the games that whose accomplishments fueled their growth. He also provides some interesting and unique insights as to turning points in the history of each sport and how the vortex of those turning points was so similar. For example, Ruth in baseball, Rockne in football and Hank Lusetti in basketball all provided an elevation point for their respective sports both by providing dramatic, interesting, charismatic personalities but also through feats that made the ball easy to see in dramatic fashion (Ruth with the towering home run, Rockne by popularizing the forward pass, Lusetti in inventing the jump shot).

The book is far less successful as a vehicle of social analysis. Mandelbaum uses allusion a lot as a means for evoking the social meaning of sport. I'm not aware that allusion is a key too of either social science in general or anthropology in particular. A comparative analysis that juxtaposes baseball with agrarian values, football with industrial and martial values and basketball with spectacularly ill defined "post industrial" values may have some illustrative value but fails as an analytical tool. This discussion is often interesting but it fails to address two basic issues, to wit (1) the meaning of sports in general and (2) the enigma that the most popular US sports are of little significance to the rest of humanity.

On the whole this is a lively and informative book, and I very much enjoyed reading it. However, it doesn't even come close to its stated goal of explaining the meaning of sports, and in the end that is a major disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: More valuable for it's historical v. social analysis.
Review: Michael Mandelbaum is not a sports writer. He's part of the Washington foreign policy establishment and a professor of International studies at Johns Hopkins University. So, while he is an academic he's neither an anthropologist nor a social historian. He is, obviously, an ardent sports fan. Knowing these facts helps to understand both why this book works and why it fails.

The book works superbly as an historical analysis. Even dedicated sports fans of the Big Three (football, baseball and basketball) will learn quite a bit about the development of their favorite sports as well as about the titans of the games that whose accomplishments fueled their growth. He also provides some interesting and unique insights as to turning points in the history of each sport and how the vortex of those turning points was so similar. For example, Ruth in baseball, Rockne in football and Hank Lusetti in basketball all provided an elevation point for their respective sports both by providing dramatic, interesting, charismatic personalities but also through feats that made the ball easy to see in dramatic fashion (Ruth with the towering home run, Rockne by popularizing the forward pass, Lusetti in inventing the jump shot).

The book is far less successful as a vehicle of social analysis. Mandelbaum uses allusion a lot as a means for evoking the social meaning of sport. I'm not aware that allusion is a key too of either social science in general or anthropology in particular. A comparative analysis that juxtaposes baseball with agrarian values, football with industrial and martial values and basketball with spectacularly ill defined "post industrial" values may have some illustrative value but fails as an analytical tool. This discussion is often interesting but it fails to address two basic issues, to wit (1) the meaning of sports in general and (2) the enigma that the most popular US sports are of little significance to the rest of humanity.

On the whole this is a lively and informative book, and I very much enjoyed reading it. However, it doesn't even come close to its stated goal of explaining the meaning of sports, and in the end that is a major disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Baseball, Basketball and Football for Non Fans
Review: The Meaning of Sports has as its premise a fascinating idea: Explain our national obsession with our three top sports . . . ones that fail to captivate people in most of the rest of the world. I had often wondered about that subject, and looked forward to learning a lot. Well, I didn't really learn very much at all on that subject.

While the book purports to take an anthropologist's view of our sports, we need to remember that anthropologists mostly work with scraps and remnants left behind from the past. The skills of psychology are probably more relevant to explaining sports fanaticism, and this book doesn't apply that reference very often.

Mr. Mandelbaum chooses to characterize each sport in an overly simplified way. Baseball harkens back to the happy summers of our youth when we had lots of unstructured time. Baseball is a reference to our agrarian roots. Football allows us to turn our fascination with violence into a more positive direction than invading other countries (recent events might challenge that interpretation), while being an emblem of the industrial culture that we are leaving behind. Basketball reflects the new world order of working in flexible teams on changing assignments, and is a good metaphor for the post-industrial society we live in today. For impoverished youths, basketball has some of the nostalgia that baseball has for the middle class. I found these references and conclusions to be pretty superficial and not very insightful.

What I was surprised to find in the book was a pretty thorough history of each of the three sports. For a non fan who wants to get up-to-speed with the fans in her or his life, those parts are valuable. If you just wanted to become knowledgeable in the least amount of time on the sports, this is a five-star effort.

Sports provide lots of emotional pleasures, and a book with this much intellectual perspective doesn't quite connect with those pleasures. The home team may be losing by three touchdowns . . . but the fans are still there. Why? Many would claim it is loyalty. But it's more likely to be that the home team still has as chance to beat the point spread. Although gambling is mentioned in the book, the full impact of the appeal of betting on the games isn't quite captured.

I hope someone will eventually explain why we pursue these games . . . rather than the other ones that fascinate the rest of the world.

Rating:
Summary: Baseball, Basketball and Football for Non Fans
Review: The Meaning of Sports has as its premise a fascinating idea: Explain our national obsession with our three top sports . . . ones that fail to captivate people in most of the rest of the world. I had often wondered about that subject, and looked forward to learning a lot. Well, I didn't really learn very much at all on that subject.

While the book purports to take an anthropologist's view of our sports, we need to remember that anthropologists mostly work with scraps and remnants left behind from the past. The skills of psychology are probably more relevant to explaining sports fanaticism, and this book doesn't apply that reference very often.

Mr. Mandelbaum chooses to characterize each sport in an overly simplified way. Baseball harkens back to the happy summers of our youth when we had lots of unstructured time. Baseball is a reference to our agrarian roots. Football allows us to turn our fascination with violence into a more positive direction than invading other countries (recent events might challenge that interpretation), while being an emblem of the industrial culture that we are leaving behind. Basketball reflects the new world order of working in flexible teams on changing assignments, and is a good metaphor for the post-industrial society we live in today. For impoverished youths, basketball has some of the nostalgia that baseball has for the middle class. I found these references and conclusions to be pretty superficial and not very insightful.

What I was surprised to find in the book was a pretty thorough history of each of the three sports. For a non fan who wants to get up-to-speed with the fans in her or his life, those parts are valuable. If you just wanted to become knowledgeable in the least amount of time on the sports, this is a five-star effort.

Sports provide lots of emotional pleasures, and a book with this much intellectual perspective doesn't quite connect with those pleasures. The home team may be losing by three touchdowns . . . but the fans are still there. Why? Many would claim it is loyalty. But it's more likely to be that the home team still has as chance to beat the point spread. Although gambling is mentioned in the book, the full impact of the appeal of betting on the games isn't quite captured.

I hope someone will eventually explain why we pursue these games . . . rather than the other ones that fascinate the rest of the world.

Rating:
Summary: Superb! A great mind applied to a great subject
Review: This is a brilliant book. I recommend it wholeheartedly to any sports fan, as well as to anyone who isn't a fan. It is a pleasure to read and you'll learn a lot about the culture of the United States, about human nature and about why people love sports. Beautifully written, as well. A great mind applied to a great topic.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding - A great book for Sports Fans & Thinkers Alike
Review: What a wonderful and unique addition to the world of sports publishing. Not only are there facts galore that educate even a highly knowledgeable sports fan, the insights and analysis are unparrelled. I could not put it down.

This amazing book by Professore Mandelbaum can be read on many levels (far more than I can probably grasp) and yet it appears approachable by anyone; be they sports fan, someone who questions why sports are important in our society, and even those looking for lessons on how to lead people or manage a business.

The contrasting of baseball, football and basketball provides a fascinating window on why we Americans are who we are today and how we got here. The interlacing of history with observations about how people operate in our society and within organizations is really amazing.

We love our football in Texas and Mandelbaum is right on in his analysis about football in every sense. He hits the mark on baseball and basketball as well. This book really makes you think, but gives so much in return that you come away feeling as though you just had a wonderful meal for your mind. I now enjoy watching sports more than I did before reading The Meaning of Sports.

I am going to read it again.