The SportsThink Weekly Read #8

January 7, 2022

The SportsThink Weekly Read highlights my favorite sport-related article of the week. On the last Friday of each month, I send out the Monthly Review, a longer digest of readings and other content of interest. Most articles are recently published, but some are not; the only rule is that I’ve read them within the past week (or the past month, in the case of the Monthly Review). Some are relevant to my day job as a professor teaching courses on the business, history, and philosophy of sports. Others are just plain interesting, relevant to my life-long obsession with the games we play. The newsletter is free, but comes with two requests. 1. I’m always open to suggestions, so send me the good stuff that you read! 2. If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with other folks who might enjoy it as well. Finally, I try to focus on non-paywalled writing, but if you find yourself unable to access anything, just hit reply to the email and I’ll do my best to get you a copy. Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year! Here’s the Weekly Read…

‘Guide Our Shot’: An Italian Town Roots for Its Patron Saint of Basketball, by Jason Horowitz, via the New York Times. Something a little kooky and charming to start the new year. The story of Porretta Terme, a small and basketball obsessed town in Italy, and the efforts to lobby the Vatican for a patron saint of roundball. Cool piece of history and culture. This one entertained me in the tail-end of my COVID isolation and I hope it does the same for you as we wrap up the first week of the year.

See you next week,

Tolga