Protests, taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem, culture wars—increasingly, sports and politics are tangled together. While professional athletes ply their trade in front of tens of thousands of avid fans and millions of TV viewers, their personal lives and behavior are also scrutinized. Historian Catsam concludes, "Athletes who deviated from the expectation to be seen and rarely heard would find that they were very much bound and very much not protected." .... Professional athletes have the right to use their stage and celebrity to promote social justice, and calling attention to injustice is certainly not unpatriotic. A winning and widely appealing blend of biography, sports history, and the struggle for social justice.

Booklist

This book is a worthy addition to the literature about athlete activism in the US because of its readability and because it highlights some less-known history in the context of more famous incidents. The book begins with the mythologized origin-story of the “Star-Spangled Banner” being played at the 1918 World Series, noting that the song had been played at several prior games as early as 1862, long before it was designated the national anthem….The recurring theme is that athletes have long used their voices to call out injustice and have long been punished or ignored by society—until at some future point they are recast as heroes…. the histories revealed are compelling and the citations comprehensive. Recommended. All readers.

Choice Reviews

History deniers, be warned. Professor and notable sports historian Derek Catsam hits a homerun with Don’t Stick to Sports, a collection of essays that highlight the unavoidable intersection between sports and politics in American culture. Catsam brilliantly draws the correlation between the 1918 global pandemic, domestic tensions, and the use of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to the 2020 global pandemic and subsequent debates on personal freedom and public health, and American athletes taking a knee during the National Anthem. Through the personal histories of some of the greatest names in NFL, NBA, and MLB, in boxing, track and field, tennis and more, Catsam challenges the idea that athletes should “stick to sports” and leave activism at the door even as sports has become a popular leverage for politicians to “rouse the ire of cultural warriors against imaginary foes.” From Muhammad Ali to Brittney Griner, from Bill Russell to Mary Decker, from Jackie Robinson to Billie Jean King, Catsam reminds us just how intertwined sports, politics, civil rights, and the most basic freedoms truly are. You need this book in your personal library.

Alexandra Allred, member of the first-ever U.S. women's bobsled team, USOC Athlete of the Year, White House Champion of Change for Public Health nominee, and author of When Women Stood: The Untold History of Females Who Changed Sports and the World

As bottom-up history, Don’t Stick to Sports is a brave and bold book that will change the reader’s thinking about how they view American sports. From telling the history of the playing of the “Star-Spangled Banner” at sporting events, to detailing how today’s LGBTQ athletes navigate a toxic sporting space, Derek Catsam gives a powerful history lesson on why studying sports can tell us a lot about ourselves as a nation.

Louis Moore, historian, speaker, and author of We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality