The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull), by Thomas Eakins, 1871. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment Fund and George D. Pratt Gift, 1934.

Sports & Games

Volume III, Number 3 | summer 2010

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Preamble

Field of Dreams

By Lewis H. Lapham

Play is the making of civilization—how one plays the game more to the point than whether the game is won or lost.

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Blossom and Fade

By John Crowley

Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game is an experience with the pathos and wonder of all games—the game that is the universe.

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Map

Playing Grounds

On the track, in the ring, around the table, and at the target.

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27 | Fidenae

Low Overhead

Tragedy at the stadium.More

1849 | Tahiti

Surf’s Up

Herman Melville catches a wave.More

c. 100 | Alexandria

The Drug of Folly

Sports’ culture of intoxication.More

Charts & Graphs

Games Lost

The games we used to play.

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Portrait of British poet Lord Byron.

Black and white photograph of Ryszard Kapuściński holding a book.

Black and white image of Greek biographer and writer Plutarch.

Though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.

—Bion of Smyrna, c. 100 BC

Yogi Berra & Charles Barkley

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