ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a meditation on narrative and its relationship to history and sport history. One of its goals is to encourage sport historians and students to think critically about narrativity, the past and historical narrative representations of it. In sports, there are all manner of dramatic, exciting events and outcomes: last-second, game-winning shots are among our favourites. Sports fan around the world love those narratives and avidly consume them. Indeed, narrative and sports are inextricably intertwined. It is hard to imagine a sporting world that is not rooted in and fuelled by narratives about the games we play, watch, and cheer. Modern sports need narratives in order to exist as we know them. The argument is that more historians should lean into narrative, run towards and embrace it. Sport history – all history – would profit from more self-reflexive, creative, sophisticated, engaging storytelling. The possibilities for sport history in particular are tremendous.
