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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Black game board with circular gold pattern.

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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1893 | Cove Neck, NY

Taste for Blood

Theodore Roosevelt’s hunting habits.More

1885 | United States

People Will Look

“The tricycle has come to stay.”More

1849 | Tahiti

Surf’s Up

Herman Melville catches a wave.More

Charts & Graphs

Casualties of the College Culture Wars

Offensive mascots who got sidelined.

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Black and white image of Greek biographer and writer Plutarch.

Image from Codex Manesse depicting a tournament of knights.

Black and white photograph of former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt.

Mosaic portrait of a bearded man in red holding a book

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

Missing contributor image silhouette

Dutch historian Johan Huizinga.

Bacchylides & Johan Huizinga

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