Players: 250 Men, Women and Animals Who Created Modern Sport

Tim Harris

nov 2009 · Random House

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It may be natural to play games, but the sports we love aren't natural at all. Each and every one of them has been invented, tweaked, pushed and pulled to come up with better rules, cleverer tactics and more effective techniques. There are no prizes for guessing who invented the Cruyff Turn or the Fosbury Flop - but who invented the header or the sliding tackle? The dive pass or the scrum? The lob or the smash? The sand wedge or the tee? The googly or the flipper?

This book introduces 250 men, women and animals, each of whom has transformed at least one major sport. Famous or infamous, remembered or forgotten, god-like or god-awful, the game was never the same after them.

In making his selection, Tim Harris, author of Sport, has drawn on years of passion, argument and research to produce a list that is at once personal and authoritative, provocative and challenging: the rogues, rulers and revolutionaries who shaped the games we play today.

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Author Tim Harris is a former advertising copywriter and creative director who became increasingly obsessed by sporting history after a pub argument about why football shirts tend to be striped and rugby shirts hooped. He is the author of Sport: Almost Everything You Ever Wanted to Know.