Players: An interview with author Tim Harris

By ⋅ September 21, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment
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playersLater today on the program, anchor Marco Werman speaks with author (and possible contender for world’s greatest sports nerd) Tim Harris. Harris has written a book called Players: 250 Men Women and Animals who Created Modern Sport. Amongst other things, he tells Marco about a vaudeville star who reinvented swimming and the man who worked out how best to jump over objects while riding a horse.

Is there a sporting man, woman (or animal) who you think hasn’t gotten the recognition they deserve? Leave a comment below.


Discussion

2 comments for “Players: An interview with author Tim Harris”

  • Charles J. Read

    In response to your asking what athlete should be remember. Let us never forget Olympian and Boston Marathon winner Tarzen Brown, a full-blooded narragansette Indian from Rhode Island who ran in the 1930s.
    Check Michael Ward’s touching and acurate autobiography, “Ellison ‘Tarzen’ Brown,” with an astute forward by John J. Kelley (The Younger) from New London, Connecticut, also a “Boston” winner and Olympian.
    As with many life stories of American Indians, Tarzen’s is sad, yet explodes with pride.

    Respectfully,
    Charles J. Read
    Authorof a book review of “Ellison ‘Tarzen’ Brown” for the Providence Journal, December 17, 2006.

  • Manny Villarreal

    The father and son duo that are Rick and Dick Hoyt may never find themselves named in some revered Hall of Fame Ceremony but, as both a father and an athlete, I say they deserve the recognition that is often wasted on the rockstar athletes of this generation. The following is an excerpt from their website http://www.teamhoyt.com – “Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-and-son team from Massachusetts who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they’re not in a marathon they are in a triathlon — that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.

    It’s a remarkable record of exertion — all the more so when you consider that Rick can’t walk or talk.

    For the past twenty five years or more Dick, who is 65, has pushed and pulled his son across the country and over hundreds of finish lines. When Dick runs, Rick is in a wheelchair that Dick is pushing. When Dick cycles, Rick is in the seat-pod from his wheelchair, attached to the front of the bike. When Dick swims, Rick is in a small but heavy, firmly stabilized boat being pulled by Dick.”