Robert Frost (1874-1963), one of America's most esteemed poets, underlined the country's fascination with sports when he said, "Nothing flatters me more than to have it assumed that I could write prose – unless it be to have it assumed that I once pitched a baseball with distinction." Whether poet or politician, carpenter or cardiologist, Americans from all walks of life share an abiding interest in athletic games and contests.

The freedoms to invent, adapt, and create – central to the American experience – are integral to the proliferation of sports activities in the United States and the tremendous popularity they enjoy. Sports are both a social glue bonding the country together and a vehicle for transmitting such values as justice and fair play, team work and sacrifice. They have contributed to racial and social integration, and even to the development of language, as sports terms and expressions slide into everyday usage. Sports also have been a popular focus for the arts, particularly in novels and films.

Various social rituals have grown up around athletic contests. The local high school football or basketball game represents the biggest event of the week for residents in many communities across the United States. Fans of major university and professional football teams often gather in parking lots outside stadiums to eat a picnic lunch before kickoff, and for parties in front of television sets in each other's homes during the professional championship game, the Super Bowl. Thousands of baseball fans flee the snow and ice of the North for a week or two each winter by making a pilgrimage to training camps in the South and Southwest to watch up close their favorite players prepare for the spring opening of the professional baseball season.

If sports lovers are not watching or playing a game, it is likely they are searching the Internet, tuning in a broadcast, or perusing the sports pages of the morning newspaper for the latest results of their favorite teams and athletes. The media often use sports as a magnifying glass through which to focus on a larger social or cultural phenomenon. For instance, the Washington Post recently published a front-page story about a small, rural town in the western state of Montana that is struggling to keep its high school football program alive in the face of a declining local population. "If we don't have these boys playing football, we don't have anything to get together for," one resident plaintively told the Post.

We have attempted in this journal to relate some of the poetry and prose, so to speak, of sports in America. Three distinguished essayists - Roger Rosenblatt, John Edgar Wideman, and Joseph Epstein - bring unique and very personal observations to the meaning and value of the games that Americans play. Other writers provide contrasting views of the influence of sports across the American landscape and around the world. We explore some current social trends and developments, such as the growing involvement of women and persons with disabilities in competitive athletics, an outgrowth of federal legislation and an expanding national consciousness. We describe how coaches and players at two secondary schools in the suburbs Chicago made provisions for Muslim team members to fast during Ramadan.

To consider the financial aspects of sports, we talk with an economist who dispels some of the myths surrounding the "bottom line" component in professional and collegiate athletics in the United States. And finally, in addition to a bibliography of books and Internet sites, we round out our coverage with some lists of quotes, idioms, films, and statistics that give additional insight to the phenomenon of sports in America.

We hope we have been able to provide to readers not only interesting information about sports in America, but new insights as well into American culture and society.