Every sport has a history, and these sports span the gamut of time. The histories of running and horse racing, for example, go back thousands of years. Forms of ice hockey and soccer can be traced to the Middle Ages while sports such as baseball, football, and basketball have histories of less than 200 years.
Sports fans can be found almost anywhere in the world. They never seem to tire of the current stories of their favorite teams and players, and the media feeds these fans with constant and often instantaneous information. Today’s fans are the most informed of any in history.
Technology has changed the dissemination of sports news. I admit that I find myself checking my iPhone throughout the day to see if any new information about my teams has been transmitted and often know information before it hits the radio, the television or the newspaper. One can only imagine what the future will hold for sports news dissemination.
Not many people would argue that the most popular sports are well covered, at least on the professional and collegiate levels. A greater argument can be made that a dearth of coverage exists for sports such as water polo, badminton, and cross country. Also, women’s sports lack adequate coverage. Still one can find some periodical or electronic outlet that covers these sports at some level of depth.
So many wonderful stories are covered in today’s sports world, but what of the past? Many people have fond memories of their sports heroes and their teams. Current media will from time to time bring back those memories through entertaining and thoughtful articles, broadcast stories with old sound bites, and blog posts. Yet, so many more entertaining stories from the past can be found, and it is these types of stories that I hope to bring to a wide audience.
I do not profess to be a sports history expert, nor do I have delusions of winning a Pulitzer Prize one day. The moniker “The Sports Historian” was chosen because of its domain availability. I am not the “The” of anything!
My focus, at least initially, will be on sports history stories from the southeast region of the United States. Specific sports stories will coincide with the season: football in the summer, fall and winter; basketball and ice hockey in the fall, winter and spring; baseball in the spring, summer, and fall; and golf throughout most of the year. While the focus will be on the aforementioned sports, any sport, anytime, anywhere is fair game.
The stories and blog posts on this site will strive to be informative, factual, and entertaining. I hope you like what you see, and certainly welcome comments, constructive criticism, and story ideas.
