David Halberstam

David Halberstam is a prolific journalist and the author of numerous books on both political topics and sports, including Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made. In the following selection, he traces the rise of professional sports in America, paying particular attention to how this rise reflects American cultural and economic progress. The popularity of professional baseball in the early decades of the twentieth century, for example, was an outgrowth of the prosperity that followed the Industrial Revolution. When Jackie Robinson became the first black player in Major League Baseball in 1947, it foreshadowed the civil rights struggles of the 1950s. The popularity of the Super Bowl in the 1960s accompanied the nation's embrace of its role as a superpower, and the many controversies surrounding Muhammad Ali's career reflected...