American Sports Legends: Your Turn to Score

Since ancient times, and across all civilizations, sports has occupied an important position in society. The best athletes are adored and serve as role-models for others – their legacy lives long after their careers and lives. Sports (and its metaphors) have profoundly penetrated our language, politics, society, and even our psyche. This book is a collection of poems that provide clues for readers to guess the sport, athlete, event, date and place. The sport and athlete are easy to discern, but for those with only peripheral knowledge of the event, identifying the event can be challenging. Two sets of hints are provided: one that names the athlete, and another that identifies the sport. In most cases, these hints serve more to verify that readers are on the right track. A more useful hint would be the event’s year, which would give readers a hint of when during the athlete’s life the event took place. After the first couple of poems the hints are not very useful as readers learn how to discern the sport and athlete from the writing style. Answers to all sixty-eight quiz/poems are provided at the back of the book.

The sports covered include not only the major three American sports, but also others like surfing and sled dog racing, among others. Both winter and summer sports are covered. Most of the events focus on professional sports, there are some that cover amateur sports, and very few that cover feats and other such events. The events covered are both on the field and off the field, hence readers do need to follow sports to “score” some of these poems. Given the breath of sports covered, and the event not being limited to just on-field ones, at least some poems would challenge even the most knowledgeable sports enthusiasts. A great book for sports enthusiasts – especially those who love trivia.