ABSTRACT
Irish-American athletes dominated many early sports, especially boxing and baseball, and they also achieved success at the 1908 and 1912 Olympic games. These achievements in sports, and the resultant celebrity attained by several Irish-American athletes, figured significantly in the reformulation of Irish-American identity. This chapter explores how the narrative surrounding the Irish in American sports recast the Irish physical body as an exemplary American ideal and the Irish spirit as representing perseverance and endurance. The chapter focuses in detail on the ways in which period newspapers and magazines constructed the Irishness of such notable athletes as John L. Sullivan, Ty Cobb, Connie Mack, and the many Olympic medalists from New York’s Irish Athletic Club.
