G. Edward White - Soccer in American Culture: The Beautiful Games Struggle for Status

THIS VOLUME IS analogous to my 1996 book Creating the National Pastime, a study of the history of major-league baseball, in three respects. First, it is a venture in sports history, containing comparatively little coverage of legal issues, and in that respect is a departure from my usual scholarly concerns. Second, it focuses on a sport in which I have spent a fair amount of my life as a player and coach. And third, it represents something of a break, or perhaps a treat, after a long interval of scholarship on legal and constitutional history. I began work on Creating the National Pastime after one such interval, which took place from around 1983 to 1993; and turned to this book after another, from around 2009 to 2019. I am of the view that one of the ways to stimulate the consistent production of scholarship over time is to change topics, time frames, and methodological approaches as one sequences scholarly projects. As my colleagues have often noted, I like to learn through researching and writing, and one way I do that is by identifying topics and approaches with which I am generally unfamiliar and seeking to say something distinctive about them. I have learned a lot in writing this book, and I hope I have been able to make a contribution to the understanding of its subjects.

Because the history of American soccer has been a generally underresearched topic, especially by scholars, and because many of the secondary works in the area lack scholarly documentation, this book has been something of a research challenge, and I have had to rely even more heavily than usual on the help of the reference librarians at the University of Virginia School of Law. Thanks to Amy Wharton, Kent Olson, Leslie Ashbrook, Randi Flaherty, Ben Doherty, and Kristin Glover for tracking down sources, a task made more complicated by the pandemic and its effect on interlibrary loans. Thanks as well to Loren Moulds for his assistance in identifying illustrations and facilitating permissions for images. And a special thanks to the LawIT department for their multiple Team Viewer sessions, in which I received various sorts of technical help. I am one of their least competent clients, and I appreciate their patience.

Kenneth S. Abraham and Neil Duxbury each read an early draft of the book manuscript and gave me helpful comments. Persons familiar with their scholarship might initially wonder what qualified them to opine on the subjects covered in the book, but they each bear a connection to the history of soccer in England and America. Ken grew up in one of the communities where soccer was first played in the United States, and Neil is a resident of a UK city hosting two of the worlds best-known soccer clubs (and a far less celebrated club of which he is unfortunately enamored). I leave it to readers to attempt to guess the respective locations, if they feel the need for a break from the books text.

The book has been immeasurably improved by the efforts of Adam Criblez, the editor of the University of Missouri Press series Sports and American Culture in which it appears, and Andrew Davidson, editor in chief of the press. Both Adam and Andrew read successive drafts of the book manuscript and gave me line-by-line comments, as well as made suggestions about the overall scope and content of the work. I also profited from the comments of Steven Reiss on an earlier draft and two anonymous readers of the penultimate draft. I want to emphasize the contributions of Adam and Andrew, however, because it has been a very long time in my publishing history since someone associated with a university press has engaged in the close reading and editing of one of my manuscript drafts. When I first submitted book manuscripts to university presses, in the late 1960s, such reading and editing was the norm, but with the dramatic changes in book publishing that have taken place since that decade, it is now quite rare. I lament its lossthere is nothing more helpful to an author than to have engaged, critical readings of manuscript draftsand have welcomed Adams and Andrews interventions.

This book is dedicated to my younger daughter Elisabeth, once a soccer player who had to endure her father as her high school coach for three years. Perhaps Elisabeths daughters will become attracted to the sport and Elisabeth will end up coaching them. And my love to Susan Davis White, Alexandra White, and the other members of the Whites extended family, who hopefully will be safe, healthy, and able to see one another in person by the time this book appears.