Full Description
LA Sports brings together sixteen essays covering various aspects of the development and changing nature of sport in one of America's most fascinating and famous cities. The writers cover a range of topics, including the history of car racing and ice skating, the development of sport venues, the power of the Mexican fan base in American soccer leagues, the intersecting life stories of Jackie and Mack Robinson, the importance of the Showtime Lakers, the origins of Muscle Beach and surfing, sport in Hollywood films, and more.
Contents
Introduction
"I Love LA": The Sporting Culture of Los Angeles
1. The Life Cycles of Sports Venues in Los Angeles: Sports and Local Economic Development
2. On Los Chorizeros, the Classic, and El Tri: Sports and Community in Mexican Los Angeles
3. Pitches Less Than Perfect: Notes on the Landscape of Soccer in Los Angeles
4. Figure Skating in Southern California: From Frontier to Epicenter
5. Sports Car Paradise: Racing in Los Angeles
6. Professional Football in the City of Angels: The Game Moves West
7. The 1932 Olympics: Spectacle and Growth in Interwar Los Angeles
8. "Never Go Back": Pasadena Racial Politics and the Robinson Brothers
9. Reel Sports: Hollywood Stars at Play in LA
10. Behind the Curtain: Leadership, Ingenuity, and Culture in the Making of Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Showtime, and the Laker Dynasty
11. The Golden Games: The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics
12. Shaping the Boom: Los Angeles Surfing from George Freeth to Gidget
13. The Halcyon Days of Muscle Beach: An Origin Story
14. I Was Standing There All the While: Jim Murray and the Birth of a Sports Mecca
15. Vin Scully: The Voice of Los Angeles
