Collection highlights, news about acquisitions, events and exhibits, and behind-the-scenes looks at the work and services of Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) at Notre Dame.
The exhibition Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is now open and will run through the end of January 2025.
Curators Gregory Bond and Elizabeth Hogan will host exhibit open houses on select Friday afternoons before Notre Dame home football games, including on November 8 and November 15. The drop-in open houses will run from 3:00–4:30pm and will feature brief remarks by the curators at 3:15pm.
Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.
The current spotlight exhibits are Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence (September – December 2024) and A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment (September – November 2024).
RBSC will be closed during the University of Notre Dame’s Thanksgiving Break, November 28 – 29.
We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month.
“Todas las competencias deportivas, no solamente las internacionales o las interestatales, sino también las interpoblaciones, deben servir para estrechar los lazos de amistad y nunca para distanciar a los pobladores o fanáticos.”
“All sporting competitions, not only international or interstate ones, but also local ones, should serve to strengthen the bonds of friendship and never to distance the residents or fans.”
The September 3, 1953, issue (page 1) of the Mexico City-based magazine Beisbol: Semanario Especializado (Baseball: Weekly Special) published this article lamenting the increasingly bitter and antagonistic rivalries between baseball teams and spectators in Mexico. The editors encouraged their readers to find common ground through sports and urged fans to temper their intensity.
The magazine did acknowledge the centrality of fan participation during baseball games, but it urged moderation in cheering:
“Un encuentro de beisbol sin gritos ni alaridos, es como una cerveza sin espuma; ésta es indispensable para que la cerveza se apetezca… pero tampoco gustará usted de tomarse una cerveza que sea pura espuma.”
“A baseball game without shouts and screams is like a beer without foam; the foam is essential for the beer to be appetizing… but you would not like to drink a beer that is pure foam.”
The editors concluded dramatically: “… después de un encuentro beisbolero, cuando se haya disipado el olor de la pólvora, los contrincantes deben darse la mano y seguir siendo amigos.” (“…after a baseball game, when the smell of gunpowder has dissipated, the opponents must shake hands and continue being friends.”)
Baseball fans, including a man wearing a mask and holding a flag, watch the “Coastal Classic” between teams from Mazatlán and Culiacán, two cities in the state of Sinaloa, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Source: Beisbol January 14, 1954, page 17.
Rare Books and Special Collections recently acquired nine issues of Beisbol: Semanario Especializado dating from 1953 and 1954. Beisbol, edited by Salvador Mondragón, a prominent Mexican baseball administrator and booster, was published from about 1946-1957. Mondragón was involved for many years with running the country’s professional leagues, as well as organizing Mexico’s amateur teams for international competitions.
Beisbol covered all aspects of the sport. Many issues focused on the professional Mexican Leagues in both the summer and winter seasons. But the magazine also covered other subjects of interest to Mexican baseball fans, including semi-pro and amateur baseball, Mexican and Latin American players who competed in other leagues, news from the American major leagues, foreign teams that visited Mexico, historical baseball stories, and many other topics.
A small sampling of articles from the profusely illustrated magazine gives a good sense of the range of subjects covered in Beisbol.
The November 12, 1953, issue (pages 8-9 and 18-19), for instance, provided in-depth coverage of the recent visit of Jackie Robinson’s Stars, a barnstorming club of American major leaguers, minor leaguers, and Negro Leaguers led by the Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson and Cleveland Indians outfielder Luke Easter. The magazine featured a two-page spread of photos of the American players.
The magazine printed a two-page article “El Parque ‘Carta Clara’ Recibe Maquillaje” (“The Park ‘Carta Clara’ Receives a Makeover”) in its September 3, 1953 (pages 28-29), issue about renovations at Carta Clara Park in Mérida. The author of the article extensively interviewed the field manager/groundskeeper, Carlos “Licho” Ponce, about the changes and improvements being made to the stadium.
Beisbol also routinely featured a small “Sección de Softbol” (“Softball Section”). The coverage usually focused on men’s softball, but the April 8, 1954, issue included a lengthy story about a new amateur women’s softball league (that was sponsored, in part, by the Hipódromo de las Américas, a prominent Mexico City horse racing track). According to Beisbol, the organizers of the Asociación Femenil de Softbol (Women’s Softball Association):
“… han realizado una magnífica labor, llena de penalidades, para organizar este campeonato en la cual se han abierto los brazos a las jovencitas que tuviesen deseos de jugar a la pelota y no contasen con elemento para hacerlo…” (page 30).
“…have done a magnificent job, full of hardships, to organize this championship in which they have opened their arms to the young girls who had wanted to play ball and did not have the resources to do it…” (page 30).
The issue featured numerous photographs (pages 32-34) of opening day and action from the first games.
Each issue of Beisbol: Semanario Especializado featured remarkable full-color cover illustrations drawn by artist Guillermo Ley. Ley’s eye-catching images humorously commented on important current events in Mexican baseball.
The August 20, 1953, cover illustration, for example, depicted the in-season travels of Cuban pitcher Aristónico Correoso. Correoso had been released by two teams in La Liga Mexicana (Mexican League) during the 1953 season before signing with Tuneros de San Luis in La Liga Central (Central League) and leading his new team to the top of the standings.
The cover of September 24, 1953, editorialized about outfielder Humberto Barbón’s recent decision to leave the Campeche Pirates of la Liga Peninsular de Yucatan (the Yucatan Peninsular League) to play for a team in Havana, Cuba. The illustration shows “el tesoro de los piratas” (“the treasure of the pirates”) waving goodbye and departing Mexico in a boat rowed by the manager of the Havana team.
Ley’s intricate and attractive illustrations and caricatures commented on many different topics of the day and likely helped to draw readers’ attention to the magazine. On November 12, 1953, his cover illustrated the race between the six teams of the Veracruz Winter league vying for the championship, and on April 6, 1954, Ley’s cover showed underdog Venezuela bursting the Mexican team’s balloon by winning the baseball gold medal at the 1954 Central American and Caribbean Games.
Beisbol: Semanario Especializado is an important source documenting the post-World War Two history of baseball in Mexico and throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America. These scarce issues—Worldcat finds only one other institution with any holdings of Beisbol—are open and available to researchers in Rare Books and Special Collections.
The exhibition Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is now open and will run through the end of January 2025.
Curators Gregory Bond and Elizabeth Hogan will host exhibit open houses on select Friday afternoons before Notre Dame home football games, including on October 11, November 8, and November 15. The drop-in open houses will run from 3:00–4:30pm and will feature brief remarks by the curators at 3:30pm in October and 3:15pm in November.
Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.
The October spotlight exhibits are Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence (September–December 2024) and A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment (September–November 2024).
RBSC will be open regular hours (9:30am–4:30pm) during the University of Notre Dame’s Fall Break, October 19 – 27.
Hesburgh Libraries has been able to recently acquire a rare 18th-century monograph about Divine Revelation authored by an Irish Franciscan residing in Prague, now in the Czech Republic. Anthony O’Brien lived and taught at the College of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary of the Irish Franciscans of the Stricter Observance when he wrote De Divina Revelatione: seu Naturali ac Revelata Religione Tractatus Primus (Vetero-Pragae, 1762).
Following Elizabeth I’s expulsion of the Franciscans from Ireland at the end of the 16th century, a number of friars established themselves first in Louvain and then, from 1629, in Prague where the College flourished for 150 years until its dissolution under the Habsburg monarch (and Holy Roman Emperor) Joseph II in 1786.
As Brendan Jennings has noted, “While doing its important work for the education of the Bohemian clergy, the college did not neglect its primary purpose of educating priests for Ireland. It is not possible to give precise statistics for the early years of its existence, but in all probability Prague supplied the Irish Franciscan Province with a much greater number of missionaries than either of their colleges at Louvain and Rome. It was a much larger institution and often housed, from the middle of the seventeenth century, between sixty and eighty members.” (Jennings, “The Irish Franciscans in Prague,” Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, v. 28 (1939), p. 221)
Supplementing the texts which had already appeared in the “dissertation” versions of O’Brien’s work, printed between 1759-1762, we find here Quaestio IV (on miracles) extended by a further 40 pages. An entirely new Quaestio V addresses the problem of whether divine revelation is truly limited only to the Christian religion, including an extensive discussion on Islam (p. 473-499) and an even longer treatment of Judaism (p. 500-597). Although the title-page mentions “Tomus Primus” (“first book”), no further volumes were published.
We have found only two other North American library holdings of this edition.
In honor of Labor Day, when the United States celebrates the achievements of workers and their contributions to the nation, Rare Books and Special Collections highlights sources about Labor Day, labor, and labor organizing held in the Catholic Pamphlets Collection.
During the 1970s Rev. George G. Higgins, a long-time staff member for the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), now known as the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB), published an annual “Labor Day Statement.” Known as the “Labor Priest,” Higgins spent his career supporting workers, their unionization, and calls for economic justice. Higgins worked particularly closely with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers during the 1960s and 1970s. The priest also assisted workers in other parts of the economy who wanted to organize, including health care service workers in Catholic hospitals. In his “Labor Day Statements” across the decade, Higgins expressed hope in the promise of American democracy and in the Catholic Church’s social justice teaching for workers’ to achieve economic justice.
George G. Higgins, Labor Day Statement from 1973, 1976, and 1979. (Catholic Pamphlet Collection, Box 41)
In addition to Higgins’ Labor Day tracts, the Catholic Pamphlet Collection holds publications by other “Labor Priests,” a small group of American Catholic clergy who, over the twentieth century, advocated for workers. One of these progressives was Higgins’ mentor, Rev. John A. Ryan. He published a series of pro-union pamphlets in the 1930s and supported the social welfare programs created through President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Of course, not all Catholics agreed with Ryan’s position on labor and the New Deal during the Great Depression; RBSC’s Catholic Pamphlet Collection represents these views also. Father Charles Coughlin’s popular radio campaign against FDR and the New Deal is well known. The priest’s virulent anti-union and anti-communist views appear here in a number of pamphlets.
The Catholic Pamphlet Collection also holds related, non-Catholic publications as well, like this anti-Congress of Industrial Organizations and anti-communist booklet, Join the C.I.O. and Build a Soviet America from 1937. The CIO was an inter-racial union for primarily unskilled workers that Coughlin and other conservatives believed was a communist front.
From Labor Day Statements supporting farm workers in the 1970s to New Deal-era workers’ rights and anti-union fears in the 1930s, the Catholic Pamphlet Collection encourages and enables exploration about and around working people in the United States, and many other topics.
RBSC is closed Monday, September 2nd, for Labor Day.
Rare Books and Special Collections welcomes students, faculty, staff, researchers, and visitors back to campus for Fall ’24! We want to let you know about a variety of things to watch for in the coming semester.
Fall 2024 Exhibition: Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924
“Notre Dame football is a new crusade: it kills prejudice and stimulates faith.” — Rev. John F. O’Hara, C.S.C., Prefect of Religion, Religious Bulletin, November 17, 1924
In the fall of 1924, the University of Notre Dame found great success on the football field and confronted a dangerous and divisive political moment. The undefeated Fighting Irish football team, cemented forever in national memory by Grantland Rice’s legendary “Four Horsemen” column, beat the best opponents from all regions of the country and won the Rose Bowl to claim a consensus national championship. Off the field, Notre Dame battled a reactionary nativist political environment that, in its most extreme manifestation, birthed the second version of the Ku Klux Klan. Sympathizers of this “100% Americanism” movement celebrated white, male, Protestant citizenship and attacked other groups—including Catholics and immigrants—who challenged this restrictive understanding of American identity.
In the national spotlight, Notre Dame leaders unabashedly embraced their Catholic identity. They consciously leveraged the unprecedented visibility and acclaim of the football team to promote—within the very real political constraints of the era—a more inclusive and welcoming standard of citizenship. Attracting a broad and diverse fan base, the 1924 national champion Fighting Irish discredited nativist politics and helped stake the claim of Notre Dame—and Catholics and immigrants—to full citizenship and undisputed Americanness.
Curators will host exhibit open houses on select Friday afternoons before Notre Dame home football games, including on September 6, September 27, and October 11. The drop-in open houses will run from 3:00–4:30 and will feature brief remarks by the curators at 3:30.
Other curator-led tours open to the public will be announced soon. Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.
This exhibition is curated by Gregory Bond (Curator of the Joyce Sports Research Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections) and Elizabeth Hogan (Senior Archivist for Photographs and Graphic Materials, University Archives).
Stop in regularly to see our Collections Spotlights
Currently on Display: Making Books Count: Early Modern Books in the History of Mathematics
Discover how books shaped science and our understanding of nature. The history of mathematics guides our understanding of astronomy, as revealed in works by Galileo, Copernicus, and others. Through ancient texts tracing the evolution of mathematical thought, visitors can explore the dialogue between mathematics and nature.
The last public spotlight tour is scheduled for August 28 at 1:30 pm.
This dual case spotlight is curated by Caterina Agostini (Indiana University Bloomington, Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine). She previously served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values and the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship. She is Co-PI in the Harriot Papers project.
Opening Soon: September Spotlights
RBSC spotlight exhibits will switch over for the fall during September. Two new exhibits will feature recently acquired editions of books by Mary Wollstonecraft and two manuscript fragments of French poetry. Stay tuned for more information!
These and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment.
All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours.
Special Collections’ Classes & Workshops
Throughout the semester, curators will lead instructional sessions related to our holdings to undergraduate and graduate students from Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College. Curators may also be available to show special collections materials to visiting classes, from preschool through adults. If you would like to arrange a group visit and class with a curator, please contact Special Collections.
Events
These programs are free and open to the public.
Thursday, October 3 at 5:00pm | The Fall 2024 Italian Research Seminar and Lectures will begin with a lecture by Giovanna Corazza (Università Ca’ Foscari), “Dante’s Chorographies: From the Territory to the Comedy.”
National Women’s Football League CollectionA Revised Martyrology for 16th Century German CatholicsWomen in Irish Prisons: Autographs of Prisoners in 1923Influencing Opinion by Mapping the Early American Civil WarSome of the recent acquisitions highlighted on the blog in the past year.
Anticipated Closures
Rare Books and Special Collections is regularly open 9:30am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday. The department will be closed for the following holidays and events:
September 2, for Labor Day (Monday) September 13, for Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., Presidential Inauguration Events (Friday, afternoon only) November 28-29, for Thanksgiving (Thursday and Friday)
Our last day open before the campus closure for Christmas Celebration will be December 20 (the Friday of final exams week).
When they qualified for the 1932 Los Angeles games sprinters Louise Stokes and Tidye Pickett were the first African American women to make the United States Olympic team. Based on their strong times at the Olympic trials, Stokes and Pickett were named to the pool of six women that would be chosen for the 4×100 relay team (in those years the final official team was chosen a short time prior to the actual competitions).
The 18-year-old Stokes (from Malden, Massachusetts) and 17-year-old Pickett (from Chicago) were the only African Americans on the U.S. women’s team. But a large contingent of women athletes was, itself, relatively new. Only a few women had appeared in the first several Olympics. Starting with the 1928 games, though, the International Olympic Committee sanctioned women’s competition in a broader range of events, including more strenuous activities like track and field
The Fred L. Steers Papers in the Joyce Sports Research Collection holds manuscript material that documents the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics experience of Stokes, Pickett, and their teammates. Steers, a track athlete and 1911 graduate of Notre Dame, worked as a lawyer in Chicago and was a long-time administrator for the Amateur Athletic Union and the American Olympic Committee, the forerunner of the modern United States Olympic Committee. During the 1928, 1932, and 1936 Olympics, Steers was the Manager of the United States Women’s Track and Field Teams where he was in contact with the two African American women Olympians.
Historians who have written about Stokes and Pickett note that they frequently faced discrimination during their time on the Olympic team. Their own teammates sometime hazed them. They also routinely encountered the color line and were often not allowed to eat with the rest of the team—including in the dining room of the team hotel in Los Angeles.
Nevertheless, due to their fast qualifying times Stokes and Pickett had originally been expected to be members of the final American 4×100 relay team. Before the event, however, athletic administrators reshuffled the lineup and replaced the African Americans with two of their white teammates. The Chicago Defender, one of the country’s most influential African American newspapers blamed “this bit of back room treachery” on “lily-whiteism” and reported that “the injustice of this move is being placarded by track followers out here but to no avail” (“Tydia Pickett May Lose Olympic Spot,” Chicago Defender 30 July 1932, p. 8).
Unfortunately, the Steers Papers does not contain any additional information about the decision to bench Stokes and Pickett. But the collection does include documentation about their presence with the U.S. Olympic team. One of the most prominent items is a rare photograph of Stokes and Pickett posing together in street clothes (MSSP 5000-56: X Olympiad, Los Angeles. Photographs, 1932). A clipping from the Los Angeles Herald Express includes a large picture titled “American Girls’ Track Team Arrives” showing Stokes (standing, right) and Pickett (kneeling, second from left) with their teammates (MSSP 5000-57: X Olympiad, Los Angeles. Newspaper clippings, 1932).
The Steers Papers does contain an original manuscript item attesting to some of the discriminatory treatment encountered by the two African American women. A passenger list and reservations receipt for the train trip that the U.S. women’s Olympic track and field team took from Chicago to Denver en route to L.A. suggests that Steers racially segregated the athletes while they were on the train. The passenger card shows the lodging arrangements for the team and indicates that Steers placed Louise Stokes and Tidye Pickett in berths 11 and 12 of Pullman Car #341—separate from and two bunks away from the rest of their white teammates (MSSP 5000-54: X Olympiad, Los Angeles. Miscellaneous ephemera, 1932).
Other documents describe the presence of the two Black athletes as members of the U.S. contingent. A July 16, 1932, telegram from Fred Steers to the American Olympic Committee, for instance, lists the full official roster of the women’s track and field team. The handwritten telegram includes Louise Stokes and Tidye Pickett on line 5 as members of the relay team (MSSP 5000-52: X Olympiad, Los Angeles. Fred L. Steers correspondence, 1932).
The collection contains a multitude of other ephemera related more generally to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Significant items include a referee’s badge from the “Final Olympic Track & Field Tryouts for Women” held at Northwestern University’s Dyche Stadium on July 16, 1932 (MSSP 5000-55: X Olympiad, Los Angeles. Miscellaneous ephemera, 1932), and an unused ticket for events at the “Track and Field Olympic Stadium” on August 6, 1932 (MSSP 5000-54: X Olympiad, Los Angeles. Miscellaneous ephemera, 1932).
Louise Stokes and Tidye Pickett were again members of the U.S. team for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Their trailblazing athletic careers helped pave the way for future generations of African American women Olympians.
The Fred L. Steers Papers contains plentiful records related to the United States Olympic Teams and other amateur sports from 1916–1967. The collection is open to the public and available for research.
Jeanne de Jussie (1503-1561) was a French-Swiss nun who recounts her experiences living in Switzerland during the early years of the Swiss Reformation in this extremely rare work. Having entered the Convent of the Poor Clares in Geneva in 1521, Jeanne was appointed secretary of the Convent in 1530 and was responsible for its correspondence. Around the year 1535, she began writing in manuscript form what is now known as her “Short Chronicle,” intended to pass on current events and observations to future nuns, and which provides the basis for the book published here; an English translation of the manuscript (The Short Chronicle: a Poor Clare’s Account of the Reformation of Geneva, edited and translated by Carrie F. Klaus) was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2006.
The year 1535 also proved to be an important year in Jeanne’s life for another reason: religious opponents broke into the Convent and the sisters were threatened for weeks before obtaining permission to leave Geneva peacefully, and then moving to Annecy, where they lived in the Monastery of the Holy Cross. This and many other contemporary events are described in this work, one of the few efforts to offer a detailed look into life in the city of Geneva during this tumultuous period. Jeanne’s narrative has continued to interest scholars not only for its contemporary description of key events, but also for its female perspective; the author is clear in noting that female Catholics were often subjected to more abuse concerning their beliefs than men.
This is the first of two issues published in 1611 (ours lacks the printing date, while the second issue includes it and is four pages longer); we have found no other North American holdings of this true first edition.
This leaf (Frag. I. 21) comes from a glossed Bible produced in France during the twelfth century. Glossed bibles contained both scripture and explanatory comments (glosses) on the same page and were used in teaching and formation. The small format of this Bible (305 x 207 mm) allowed a master to bring it to the schoolroom easily for use. The layout of glossed bibles is intentional and functional: scripture occupies the central column and space is allotted for glosses to be written in the margins (marginal glosses) and between lines (interlinear glosses). The glosses can explicate the biblical text in literal, allegorical, moral, and even anagogical ways.
The particular text of this leaf comes from 2 Chronicles (II Paralipomenon). The function of interlinear and marginal glosses is distinct and can be observed in the following two examples. On the verso above the text misit Nabuchodonosor rex (“King Nebuchadnezzar sent”) an interlinear gloss is written: de hoc plenius in libro Regum scriptum est (“there is a fuller written account about him in the book of Kings”). The gloss is short and informative, directing the reader to find more information about a proper name.
Compare this to the gloss on Joachim copied in the left margin of the recto. This comment is more substantive and begins a literal/historical interpretation, then moves to allegorical and moral explications: “Joachim was taken prisoner and lead into Babylon; this signifies the fall of the righteous who were deceived by the Devil’s handiwork. They are lead astray into the ruin of heresy and vice. These people were supposed to teach others in word and deed and raise them from sin.” (Ioachim captiuus in Babilonem ductus, lapsum rectorum significat qui diaboli arte delusi, abducuntur in confusionem errorum ac uiciorum et qui alios uerbo et opere docere debuerant, et a peccato suscitare.)
The parent manuscript was formerly in the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Oyan de Joux (Saint-Claude), where it appeared in the abbey’s library catalogue dated 8 March 1492. The codex was later in the collection of William L. Clements of Bay City, Michigan (1860-1934) and then in possession of the Cleveland, Ohio, biblioclast Otto F. Ege by 1937. Leaves were also being offered for sale by Philip Duschnes (New York, NY) in 1943 and 1946.
Bibliography
Alexander Andrée, “Glossed Bibles,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Latin Bible, ed. H.A.G. Houghton, 208-224. Oxford University Press, 2023.
Auguste Castan “Le Bibliothèque de l’Abbaye de Saint-Claude du Jura: Esquisse de son histoire.” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 50 (1889): 301-354.
“Welcome to Gay Sports. As we all know—sports are an integral part of American society. This love of competition is as exciting to the Gay Community as it is to the Straight Community. In the months to come, this publication will bring you information about Gay men and women athletes competing in sporting events locally and nationally. Gay Sports is your publication. Keep us informed of what you are doing.”
—Gay Sports Nov. 1982 (vol. 1, no. 1), page 4.
Publisher Mark Brown’s introductory note in the inaugural 1982 issue of the San Francisco-based Gay Sports announced the purpose of the new publication to readers. The monthly publication—one of the earliest serials devoted to sports in the gay community—would cover national sports news, but the focus of the magazine was on publicizing and building community among gay and lesbian athletes and their allies. In honor of LGBTQ Pride Month, Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) highlights the recent acquisition of two issues (vol 1, no. 1 – November 1982; and vol 2, no. 7 – September 1983) of this scarce publication.
The cover story in the first issue of Gay Sports—then called Bay Area Gay Sports—was a feature by Duke Joyce (Nov. 1982, p. 5) about former major league baseball player Glenn Burke, who had recently publicly acknowledged that he was gay. Burke played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland A’s from 1976 to 1979, but he had struggled with his identity as a gay man while playing professional baseball. As the article explains, he “endured subtle, yet cruel innuendos” and discrimination from management. In the end, he wanted to be “truthful to himself” and not lead a “double life,” so he retired from baseball.
Joyce wrote that “being a homosexual in any homophobic environment is agonizing enough, but in the revered Major League, it is damn near sacreligious,” and he observed that there would likely be no room for “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Queers” any time soon. He applauded Burke’s courage in going public and hoped that he had “managed to further erode the stereotypical image of gays.” In closing, Glenn Burke, himself, observed: “It’s your life, and nobody else is going to live it for you. You’ve got to have self respect.”
Pictures from the 1983 Gay World Series in Chicago. (Gay Sports September 1983, pp. 12-13)
Glenn Burke’s coming out was a prominent national news story, but most of the articles in Gay Sports focused on local and community-based sports leagues or competitions for gay athletes. The annual Gay World Series softball tournament routinely received lots of attention, as did the quadrennial Gay Games. (For more information about the Gay Games, please see also the Gay Games Collection, MSSP 10070, in RBSC or the recent digital exhibit “Papers Alight: Contextualizing Mike Curato’s Flamer“).
Images from the 1983 Bay Area Women’s Softball League. (Gay Sports September 1983, pp. 6-7)
Most articles focused on local leagues and organizations that helped build communities and networks of support for gay and lesbian athletes in the Bay Area or in other cities around the country. These two issues are replete with articles about local softball leagues, tennis tournaments, swimming competitions, hiking outings, bicycling groups, billiards leagues, bowling tournaments, flag football teams, and many other types of sports and athletics.
Members of the San Francisco Different Spokes Cycling Club pose on the cover of the September 1983 issue of Gay Sports.
These sporting activities served a variety of roles and were an important part of many people’s lives. The organizer of an overseas bicycling trip described, for example, “the ease and comfort of traveling with an all gay group” (Sept. 1983, p. 8). The leader of a San Francisco cycling club noted the value in “informally representing a portion of the gay community to the bicycling world” (Sept. 1983, p. 10). But, for the most part, the various sports leagues were about safe spaces for friendship and community. The author of an article about bowling leagues simply wrote that competitors “come together not only to enjoy the sport, but also more importantly, to enjoy each other . . . . for therein lies the magic!” (Sept. 1983, p. 18).
These issues of Gay Sports are available to researchers. RBSC welcomes new donations of Gay Sports magazine to expand our holdings of this important title.
