Ultimate Book of Sports: The Essential Collection of Rules, Stats, and Trivia for Over 250 Sports

DICTIONARY.COM defines SPORT as an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, such as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.

Kinda sorta. We beg to differ on the finer points.

Certainly we agree that sports are, by definition, physical activities. This is why chess, poker, and similar games are not included in this book. We also agree that sports must be competitive in nature. Sports must produce winners and losers.

Where we differ is in the last two examples listed. Hunting and fishing? Not so much. We classify these as mere activities. The reason? To qualify as a sport, an activity must pit one or more people in direct competition. And the word direct is critical here. Of course it is possible to transform any activity into a competition. Yet true sports involve humans competing directly with other humans.

Sure, hunters compete to bag the largest game. But let’s be honest, the essence of hunting is the competition between hunter and prey. The fact that my deer/bear/duck/fox has larger horns/weighs more/is quackier/has a fluffier tail is not the point.

It’s a similar situation with fishing. True, there are official tournaments and competitions. And true, fishermen compete to catch the largest fish. Yet labeling fishing a sport is a like making a sport of panning for gold. If my gold nugget or fish is larger than yours, it’s generally blind luck or technology that’s responsible. My ability to exert an influence over the outcome is minimal. You might as well make a sport out of trainspotting or sunset watching.

WHY ISN’T WWF WRESTLING IN THIS BOOK?

SO ACCORDING TO THE DEFINITION ABOVE, sports like the World Wrestling Federation should get a mention in this book, right?

Nope. The final requirement of a true sport is real—as opposed to staged—conflict. Certainly sports entertain, but they are not entertainments. WWF wrestling is more heavily scripted than a daytime soap opera and there’s no actual competition involved— plenty of physical skill, but no authentic conflict or competition.

It’s no different with reality television shows such as The Amazing Race, Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, Fear Factor, and a million lookalike programs. Though they often wear the trappings of sports-like pursuits, reality-television sports are artificial by their nature. You can’t participate unless you’re a specially selected contestant. And the competition ends as soon as the television show is canceled by the network. Except in reruns on late-night cable, there is no sporting future for American Gladiator and its ilk.

WHAT IS A SPORT?

ANY ACTIVITY CAN BE TURNED into a competition. So what makes a sport a sport? In this book a sport is any physical activity, governed by rules, involving authentic and direct competition between one or more people.

There are two final sports-like categories officially excluded from this book: competitive games and cultural art forms. The former includes hide-and-seek, geocaching, laser tag, miniature golf, go-cart racing, and countless other sporting activities that operate purely in the realm of fun. There’s no such thing as a professional go-cart racer or a laser tag athlete. If either title does apply to you, immediately contact your local therapist for some much-needed hugging.

Cultural art forms include activities such as bullfighting and snake charming, as well as religious and cultural festivals such as the running of the bulls in Pamplona (Spain), tomato throwing festival in Buñol (Spain), palm tree climbing competition in Jakarta (Indonesia), World Egg Throwing Championships in Swaton (England), World Sauna Championships in Heinola (Finland), and the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest in California. These events are all plenty of fun. But none qualify as a true sport.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SPORTS

SPORTS ARE AS OLD AS MANKIND. Archaeological evidence from cave paintings made twenty thousand years ago suggests that games of throwing, catching, jumping, and stick-fighting have evolved alongside humans. Sports, it seems, are simply part of what makes us human, like opposable thumbs and highly developed brains.

True competitive sports show up in nearly every ancient civilization. Wall paintings in an 1850 BC Egyptian tomb include images of wrestlers demonstrating holds still used today, as well as ball games that look mighty similar to modern handball. The ancient Egyptians— at least the upper classes with enough leisure time to spare—were also keen javelin throwers, archers, rowers, swimmers, and long-distance runners. The ancient Egyptians knew how to stay fit.

The ancient Greeks had a healthy admiration for the human form and literally worshipped their athletes. The fullest expression of this near-fanatical worship of sport is the world’s very first athletic competition: the games held in 776 BC at Olympia (home to the sanctuary of Zeus, the Greeks’ mightiest god). The games were held every four years, and soon the original Olympic footrace was augmented with discus and javelin throwing, boxing, wrestling, and chariot and horse racing. The athletes competed for glory, as the traditional prize was just a wreath woven from olive branches. The ancient Olympics lasted for more than a thousand years until AD 393—a remarkable run for any sporting event.

In the Roman era sports were a primary source of entertainment for the empire’s potentially unruly citizens. Gladiator fights and mock land-and-sea battles were not about promoting athleticism. Instead they provided the ancient equivalent of an opiate for the working classes.

It was a very different situation in ancient China and Japan, where sports were more commonly used to train future warriors in the arts of sword fighting, horse riding, and hand-to-hand combat. Probably the world’s oldest organized team sport is polo, which originated in Persia in the second century BC to train horsemen for the Persian cavalry.

It’s not until the fourteenth century that people had enough leisure time to devote to games and sports on feast days and during village celebrations. The many related games of bowls date from this era, all involving rolling round objects close to—but not touching—a target.

Tennis is the next big innovation in sports. Monks in sixteenth-century France stretched a rope across the monastery courtyard and used their hands to hit a ball. Gloves were used later and eventually players started to use short bats. England’s King Henry VII became a passionate player and built many royal courts to slake his tennis thirst. Following tennis, new sports such as curling, billiards, golf, and horse racing became fashionable.

ARCHERY, THE ORIGINAL 2ND AMENDMENT

ORGANIZED SPORTS IN EUROPE disappeared after the fall of the Roman Empire. Even throughout the Middle Ages people had little time for sports—they were too busy dying of the plague or dying in the Crusades or dying in childbirth. The one exception was archery, which was highly encouraged even among the poor as a form of militia training.

In the nineteenth century, average working-class people got their first chance to participate in organized sports. As the industrial revolution swept through Europe and the United States, rules limiting work to half-days on Saturdays, for example, became commonplace. As organized sports became more accessible, the narrative of sports changed, too. It was accepted that sports developed character and morality; that sporting competitions should be fair and governed by rules; that sports are rewards unto themselves and should not be played for money. This was the golden era of amateurism in sport, perfectly embodied by the reestablishment of the modern Olympics in 1896.

In the twentieth century many sports enjoyed phenomenal growth thanks to booming post-World War II economies and the spread of television. Baseball, basketball, American football, soccer, auto racing—pretty much every major sport in the American pantheon experienced rapid growth throughout the 1950s and ‘60s as television ownership soared. Every major television network competed aggressively for broadcast rights (and the accompanying advertising space) to major games and championships. With this newfound popularity came money, lots of it.

The concept of amateurism in sports, of athletes who receive no compensation but perform for the love of their sport, was dying a slow death throughout the late twentieth century. The Olympics had nominally been an amateur-only competition for the first half of the twentieth century (athlete Jim Thorpe scandalously had his 1912 medals revoked for accepting compensation as a minor league baseball player). However, in the 1970s the International Olympic Committee (IOC) acknowledged the growing reality of money in all levels of sports and relaxed its rules barring professional athletes. By 1988 every international Olympics sporting federation, minus wrestling and boxing, allowed its professional athletes to compete.

TOP 5 BIGGEST

SPORTING SCANDALS, EVER

★ BLACK SOX SCANDAL AT THE 1919 WORLD SERIES.

It was the Chicago White Sox versus the Cincinnati Reds. At the time baseball was America’s most popular sport—nothing else even came close. Eight players on the White Sox (including Shoeless Joe Jackson, whose involvement has since been disputed) were accused of purposely losing games and were suspended from baseball for life. The scandal stunned the country. No sports scandal has ever had such a profound effect on the national psyche.

★ THE HAND OF GOD.

It was a 1986 quarterfinal World Cup soccer match between Argentina and England. The score was 0-0 in the fifty-first minute when Argentina’s most famous player, Diego Maradona, received a pass in front of England’s goal and—oops!—tapped the ball in with his hand. The referee missed the flagrant violation; millions of people watching on television did not. Amid boos and protests on the field, Argentina won the match thanks in part to a second, near-perfect, and totally legal goal from Maradona. Argentina went on to win the World Cup trophy. Maradona later admitted to cheating but claimed it was the hand of God that knocked the ball into the net.

★ TONYA HARDING WHACKS NANCY KERRIGAN.

One month before the 1994 Winter Olympics, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was bashed in the knee at the end of a skating practice. The attacker? A man hired by the then-husband of figure skater— and Olympic competitor—Tonya Harding. It’s debatable whether Harding knew of the attack before-hand. But it’s certain she lied to police afterwards. Kerrigan finished second. Harding wept on the ice and placed eighth and was later banned for life from skating. The story became a tabloid sensation.

★ CHEATING AT THE PARALYMPICS.

Yes, it happened at the 2000 Paralympic Games when the Spanish basketball team won gold in the intellectual disability category. The problem? Ten of the team’s twelve players had no disability. We were encouraged to pretend to be stupid, player Carlos Ribagorda said after the hoax was uncovered and the team was forced to return its gold medals.

★ RACISM AND DRUGS.

We’re bucketing up all the ugliness of professional sports into a single category. On the racism front the medal of shame is awarded jointly to cricket (for the shocking treatment of black cricketer Basil D’Oliveira during the South African apartheid era) and to the International Olympic Committee for stripping Jim Thorpe (the first Native American Olympic medalist) of his 1912 Olympic medals on a flimsy charge of violating the amateur athlete rules. There are far too many drugs scandals to list, but let’s just agree that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, the disgraced 2007 Tour de France teams, Lance Armstrong, Konstantinos Kenteris, Ekaterini Thanou, Diego Maradona, and all the other players who take performance-enhancing drugs in blatant disregard of the rules and esprit of sport—let’s agree that they all suck.

Another symptom of the influx of television money into sport was the obscenely paid sports superstar. One example: the average annual salary of an NFL player was $6,000 in the 1950s, $10,000 in the 1970s, $198,000 in the 1980s, $785,000 in the 1990s, and more than $2 million today. These are average salaries; at the high end the numbers get astronomical (NFL player Michael Vick was awarded a ten-year, $130 million contract in 2005, which doesn’t even come close to the $275 million Alex Rodriguez is guaranteed for playing Major League Baseball for ten years).

Spectators have a love-hate relationship with superstars. On one hand they love to watch them perform. Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, David Beckham, Tiger Woods, Shane Warne—who doesn’t love to watch superstar athletes perform at their peak. On the other hand, superstars seem divorced from reality, distant, untouchable—a far cry from the amateur class of athletes who dominated sports for so many years.

It’s hard to predict the future direction of sports. Are we doomed to a future with Rollerball-like mega-corporations concocting mindless sporting competitions to keep the masses in check? Or is the future of sport more noble, more hopeful? It’s hard to know. All we can say for certain is that sports fans will continue to watch the spectacles unfold on whatever devices are handy.

IF I’M A SPORTS HATER, SHOULD I STOP READING NOW?

OKAY, GOT IT. YOU HATE SPORTS. Now just for fun, list a few reasons why sports make your blood boil.

» I get yelled at when I want to watch the Emmys instead of football.

» Game seven is always more important than [fill in the blank].

» When someone at the office asks, Did you see the game last night? or says, I can’t believe they made that trade, or shouts, Go Yankees! I want to puke.

» Cheerleaders’ uniforms (buxom breasts do not win games).

» I want people to stop screaming and yelling at my television.

» Sports are boring until someone starts a fight or gets injured.

» Professional athletes are so incredibly full of themselves.

» The movies The Rookie, Invincible, Miracle, A League of Their Own, Tin Cup, and Bull Durham should never have been made.

» Sports fill me with ennui, boredom, and bored ennui.

Fair enough, these are valid reasons not to love sports.

Yet before you toss aside this book and close its cover forever, let me say one thing. Don’t get caught up in the male-dominated machismo surrounding most sports. Don’t get lost in the players’ supersized egos or the dimestore philosophizing of the twenty-four-hour sports media. None of that stuff matters.

Instead, focus on the promise of sports (even when it goes unfulfilled). Sports, at their very best, promise to:

» Instill good sportsmanship: Where else are you going to learn how to own up to your mistakes and apologize? Athletes do it all the time.

» Leave lasting impressions: Sports provide real-life drama, a captured moment of something incredible indelibly etched on your memory. This is 100 percent guaranteed: if your kids catch a fly ball at a baseball game, they will remember it for the rest of their lives.

» Connect people: Sports can bond two complete strangers over little more than a common appreciation of a sport, a player, a home team. Sports create friendships and camaraderie. The beer helps, too.

» Make men cry: Sports bring out emotions that most men would otherwise never experience. Your team loses? Cry. Your team wins? Cry.

» Provide endless entertainment: Love the magnitude. Love the spectacle. Love the halftime performance.

» Let us be kids again: For better or worse, the fastest way to channel your third-grade self is to grab a bat, basketball, football, handball, or other sporting implement, and simply have a go. Metaphorically you’re doomed to either strike out or hit a home run. Either way, you’ve forgotten about the hardships and heartbreaks of life—and instantly you’re a kid again.

Approach the rest of this book in a similar spirit and you will not be disappointed by sports.

DRAG RACING

----- DON’T BLINK, YOU’LL MISS IT -----

ASK YOUR PARENTS ABOUT THE 1950S. Apparently back then kids ate hamburgers at drive-ins, kissed in the backseats of borrowed convertibles, and spent Saturday nights watching cars race illegally on city streets. By 1953 the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA; www.nhra.com) was formed to discourage street racing in favor of competitive drag racing. The NHRA also oversaw some of the sport’s loosely organized competitions, including the famed anarchic races at Bonneville Salt Flats.

The basic idea in drag racing is for two cars to race in a straight line from a standing start—it’s a test of acceleration more than of speed. Vehicles range from standard street cars to custom-built racing dragsters, depending on the category being contested. Distances range from the traditional quarter-mile track to the eighth-mile track. The fastest times for the quarter-mile run are less than five seconds, which means racers can easily hit a top speed of 320 miles per hour.

FORMULA RACING

----- LISTEN FOR THE F1 RACER: WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE -----

THE KEY THING TO KNOW ABOUT EVERY FORMULA RACE—from the famous Formula One series down to an amateur club rally—is that formula cars are single-seaters and have open wheelbases. That’s simply what it means to be a formula racer. Modern cars also feature airfoils in front to produce downlift, which helps cars maintain traction through turns.

The sport’s premier event, and the most competitive category, is Formula One (Fl). It’s governed by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA; www.fia.com) and consists of a series of Grand Prix races held worldwide on purpose-built circuits in cities such as Monaco, Monza, Melbourne, Valencia, and Singapore. F1 is considered the fastest circuit-racing discipline with cars easily achieving speeds of up to 220 miles per hour. Fl is also a global marketing phenomenon: the annual FIA Formula One World Championship reaches television audiences that rival the FIFA World Cup in soccer.

MONSTER TRUCK

----- SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! -----

AH, THE GLORIOUS 1970S! Back in the early 1970s pickup trucks were all the rage. To celebrate the wondrousness that is a pickup truck, some owners started tricking out their rides with 4- and 5-foot-diameter tires. Woo hoo!

Naturally, with tires that large, you also need to CRUSH stuff. Enter trucks with names like Big Foot and King Kong, doing donuts, wheel-stands, and big-air jumps in front of massive crowds, absolutely and literally CRUSHING puny street cars underneath their gargantuan TIRES of DEATH (you’re doomed, little Honda Accord, mwah ha ha ha).

The radical entertainment value of monster truck racing may have faded in the last three decades, but don’t underestimate the public’s appetite for watching modified trucks with extremely large wheels and whacked-out suspensions. Monster truck competitions very much are alive and well.

RALLY RACING

----- EPIC MOTORSPORT ADVENTURE -----

THE TYPICAL RALLY RACE is held on an off-road and rough-terrain course. The goal is to complete the predetermined race stages (typically races have fifteen to twenty stages and last two to four days) in the lowest elapsed time. Race vehicles range from