Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    On the Origins of Sports: The Early History and Original Rules of Everybody's Favorite Games
    Unavailable
    On the Origins of Sports: The Early History and Original Rules of Everybody's Favorite Games
    Unavailable
    On the Origins of Sports: The Early History and Original Rules of Everybody's Favorite Games
    Ebook401 pages2 hours

    On the Origins of Sports: The Early History and Original Rules of Everybody's Favorite Games

    By Gary Belsky and Neil Fine

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The New York Times bestseller: “The perfect book for game-players and trivia fans . . . On the Origins of Sports knocks it outta the park. Don’t miss it” (Houston Style Magazine).

    On the Origins of Sports is an illustrated book built around the original rules of twenty-one of the world’s most popular sports, from football and soccer to wrestling and mixed martial arts. Never before have the original rules for these sports coexisted in one volume. Brimming with history and miscellany, it is the ultimate sports book for the thinking fan.

    Each sport’s chapter includes a short history, the sport’s original rules, and a deeper look into an element of the sport, such as the evolution of the baseball glove; sports with war roots; a compendium of sports balls; and iconic sports trophies.

    Written by ESPN The Magazine’s former editor-in-chief, Gary Belsky, and executive editor, Neil Fine, and filled with period-style line drawings, On the Origins of Sports is a book that sports fans and history buffs alike will treasure for generations.

    “I found this book to be massively fun, educational, and inspiring—and I don’t even like sports.” —A. J. Jacobs, New York Times–bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically

    “Fascinating.” —Men’s Health, “Best Beach Reads for Sports Fans”

    “Sports buffs will prize this in-depth look at competitive games, including the history of the baseball glove and iconic trophies.” —Real Simple, “Gifts for Dads”

    “A book this informative has no right to be this much fun. On the Origins of Sports is a winner.” —Dan Okrent, founder, Rotisserie Baseball
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 19, 2016
    ISBN9781579657123
    Unavailable
    On the Origins of Sports: The Early History and Original Rules of Everybody's Favorite Games
    Author

    Gary Belsky

    Gary Belsky is editor in chief of ESPN The Magazine, where he has worked since 1998. The author of several books, he lectures frequently on the psychology of decision-making to business and consumer groups around the world. From 1994 through 1998, Belsky was a regular commentator on CNN’s Your Money and a frequent contributor to Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Crossfire and Oprah; he continues to appear on local and national radio and TV, commenting on sports, economics, business and personal finance. A St. Louis native, Belsky graduated from the University of Missouri in that city in 1983 with a BA in speech communication and political science. Before joining ESPN he was a writer at Money magazine and a reporter for Crain’s New York Business and the St. Louis Business Journal. In 1990, Belsky won the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, administered by The Anderson School at UCLA. Belsky, who lives in Manhattan, serves on the board of directors of Urban Pathways, one of New York City’s largest providers of services to the homeless and mentally ill; as well as the New York Neo-Futurists, an East Village theater company.

    Related to On the Origins of Sports

    Related ebooks

    Trivia For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Pippo Inzaghi

      Mar 30, 2023

      Pippo Inzaghi
      16 min read

    • Article

      The Sixth Man

      Sep 28, 2021

      MY HEART HURTS EVERY time I think about Terrence Clarke. I didn’t know him personally beyond a couple text message exchanges, but a bunch of the SLAM staff did, and I can say unequivocally that everyone loved him. He had an energy that uplifted every

      2 min read

    • Article

      Mission (almost) Complete

      Sep 23, 2021

      Mission (almost) Complete
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Book Of Bates

      Apr 5, 2021

      IT’S A FREEZING Tuesday afternoon in mid-February and a snowstorm has blanketed a good portion of southeast Michigan. So much so that hundreds of schools in the region have canceled classes. Yet, in the southeast outskirts of Ann Arbor, right off US

      8 min read

    • Article

      Nigel Pearson

      Jan 13, 2021

      Nigel Pearson
      16 min read

    • Article

      Kobe Bryant: 1978-2020

      Jan 31, 2020

      Kobe Bryant: 1978-2020
      7 min read

    • Article

      9 Sports Books That Offer Something For Every Fan

      Jan 31, 2019

      Whether an exhaustive new profile of Babe Ruth, the reflections of basketball great Bob Cousy, or a retrospective of the heyday of women’s bike racing, there’s plenty to choose from in this grab bag of books.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Britain's Sporting Life

      Nov 15, 2023

      ‘And if you know your history’ sounds like the sort of thing a politician might say, or a pub bore. To hear several thousand people say those words together, you would need to be at the football. Fans as far apart as Glasgow, Liverpool and London can

      3 min read

    • Article

      Are U.s. Sports Actually Superior To Ours?

      Apr 28, 2022

      SIR RICHARD TURNBULL, the last governor of Tanganyika, once assured Denis Healey that “when the British Empire finally sinks beneath the waves of history, it will leave behind it only two monuments: one is the game of Association Football (above), th

      3 min read

    • Article

      Sporting Ancestors

      Jul 27, 2021

      Sporting Ancestors
      6 min read

    • Article

      Touring The Baseball Hall

      Jun 21, 2022

      Touring The Baseball Hall
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Fixtures That Forged A Nation

      Mar 28, 2024

      FIRST, AN ADMISSION. YOUR REVIEWER is a sports nut. It started with the LA Olympics of 1984, glued to the TV with my grandmother, as indiscriminate in her love of any competition as I subsequently became. It didn’t matter when all the football migrat

      4 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Wishes

      Nov 19, 2022

      Christmas Wishes
      6 min read

    • Article

      Broken Barriers

      Feb 11, 2022

      It’s our pastime. The sport of professional baseball, whose origins date back to the late 1800s, is as American as it gets. Whether enjoyed at the ballpark with snacks and sunshine, or on the radio with that familiar announcer’s voice on a warm summe

      2 min read

    • Article

      Title Town USA

      Mar 18, 2023

      Title Town USA
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Sixth Man

      Jul 7, 2021

      THE WORLD CHANGES fast these days, maybe faster than ever before. At least that’s how it feels—blink once, everything is different, blink twice, everything is even more different, and the world keeps spinning. So when actual history takes place, it r

      2 min read

    • Article

      Pebbles, Pills, and Pellets

      Jul 1, 2020

      Pebbles, Pills, and Pellets
      4 min read

    • Article

      2022 Commemorative Designs

      Dec 27, 2021

      2022 Commemorative Designs
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Collector’s Christmas List

      Nov 20, 2021

      The sports collector in your family should be the easiest person to shop for on your Christmas list. In a booming sports collectible market, there are literally hundreds of thousands of options, from trendy sports cards (both modern and vintage) to a

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Voice Of The Countryside

      Dec 15, 2022

      IT was 170 years ago, on Saturday, 1 January 1853, that a klaxon sounded in the maelstrom of Victorian newsprint that represented those interests and pastimes of the leisured 19th-century gentleman. In the smoky, industrialised buzz of the city, the

      3 min read

    Reviews for On the Origins of Sports

    3.5/5

    3 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This is a fun, and oddly informative book! The research it must have taken to find the earliest rules sets for such a variety of sports, including nontraditional "sports"... labor of love...With each sport, the authors introduce it with a little history, details on how the first rules were set down, and then in sidenotes, talk about how things have changed and the current rules. The commentary weaves in acute observations (on American football: "The incremental, often-obtuse rule changes that have redefined the game for each succeeding generation of players and fans echo the complexities of the U.S. legal system."), humor ("...pickle ball can best be described as table tennis with a Wiffle ball played on a badminton court."), snark (on the rule of no hitting or kicking in wrestling: "Then there's the third form of 'wrestling' that wouldn't be anything at all if hitting and kicking weren't allowed - pro wrestling."), and trivia ("And today, while baseball mints its billions, Wiffle balls are still made in the Mullanys' tiny fifteen-person factory in Shelton, Connecticut.")In between chapters, the authors describe the various incarnations of sports items...helmets, balls, sticks, field/court sizes...nice pieces of trivia. There's bit on the "sport" of Poker (chuckling still), and even one on Rock-Paper-Scissors variations. Yes, the authors do talk about the variation popularized on The Big Bang Theory! Well, as attributed to Sam Kass, it is Rock-Paper-Scissors-Spock-Lizard.A fun read.