The aesthetically pleasing game: Watching sport is an intellectual pursuit — but only if you don't mind which team wins. David M. Carter on his book Money Games: Profiting from the Convergence of Sports and Entertainment. The deepest reason that Americans will never take to soccer is that soccer is not a metaphor for life, it’s a metaphor for Catholicism. Why you've never heard of the greatest sport ever invented. With a handful of baseballs, a few bats and an air cannon, a nuclear physicist and a mechanical engineer set out to bust some of baseball’s most prolific hitting myths. Radically brilliant, absurdly ahead of its time, ridiculously poorly planned, The National changed everything about sports journalism — and torched $150 million in the process. Greg Allen on the greatest basketball team you’ve never heard of. A review of The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football by John J. Miller. A review of Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won by Tobias Moskowitz and Jon Wertheim. For the 7-foot set, professional basketball provides more than an occupation — it's a near life imperative; take all that away, and where does that leave the likes of a retired Mark Eaton? A review of A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports by Gerald L. Early. A review of Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game by Rob Ruck. Rob Eastaway and John Haigh on the maths of gold medals: Four Olympic thoughts. The physics of cheating in baseball: Corked bats and juiced balls have long plagued baseball, but do they really help a player’s game? Charles Clotfelter on his book Big-Time Sports in American Universities. Is the fastest human ever already alive? Chuck Klosterman investigates.
