Peter Stine

America's fascination with sports is the topic of this literary anthology. Through their fiction, poetry, and essays, nearly forty writers reflect on sports as an illumination of our ordinary lives, rather than as a livelihood, a world of celebrities, or a means of escape. As Siv Cedering, Maxine Kumin, and John Ed Bradley demonstrate, often the concerns we bring to sports are profoundly personal. Our performance both as participants and spectators is a way of marking our past - our moral urgencies, our lost childhood, our role as parents, our pursuit of excellence, our fear of failure, our very identity and place in the chain of generations. Sports inevitably graze and illuminate our culture as well. Heather Ross Miller's memories of half-court women's basketball become a powerful metaphor for sexual attitudes during the 1950s. George Garrett's reflections on college football during World War II provide images that symbolize an era, and Neil Isaacs' delightful essay on major-league batboys chronicles the American Dream.

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