Celebrating Black History Month through SportsLit
This month, listen in to episodes that amplify and explain Black contributions to sports, and sports history, in North America.
One listens to learn. Across the six years and change that Neil Acharya and I have made SportsLit — where our hook and central conceit is that the interviewer(s) read the book cover to cover before the interview — we have been graced by many Black sports competitors and critical thinkers, who have talked about our books.
As always, sportslit.ca is a one-stop portal to find links to our whole catalog and links to purchase the books. Here are our guests whose work pertains to Black History Month.
Donovan Bailey, UNDISPUTED: A Champion’s Life
Crois-moi, tro mig, a conversation with Bailey about his life story, laced with insight into the glamour event of athletics less than a year out from the Paris 2024 Olympics, left me with a runner’s high. Of course, it took about 9.84 seconds to pull my hamstring.
Bailey was a flash of lightning across Canadian sport in the Nineties. Due to racial politics, it was put on him to redeem Ben Johnson — even though the two sprinters had little in common, and Bailey was not the one at Athletics Canada who forgot that any good steroid program needs to be complemented by a solid lawyerball team.1 Once Bailey erased Big Ben, it seemed like old-stock Canadian culture was over him. His book tells you where he has been coming from, and where he wants Canadian sport to go.
Muggsy Bogues, Muggsy: My Life from a Kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball
The shortest player in NBA history was so generous with time and insight in a refreshingly candid book. It balanced nostalgia for the ’90s NBA that captured the youth culture for people of Neil’s and my vintage, while also being honest about human frailties in the face of wider economic shifts.
Bogues’s story includes de-industrialization. He came up in Baltimore right as deindustrialization was taking it right to The Wire. Coincidentally, his wife Kim Bogues was a part of the HBO series’ production as an on-set chef.
Howard Bryant, Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original
The two-time Casey Award-winning Bryant discusses his meaty biography of Rickey Henderson, the greatest run-scorer in the recorded history of baseball. Bryant put into perspective how Henderson was the misunderstood warrior-artist who was not interested in explaining himself to audiences and critics — and it took time for baseball culture to catch up to him… if indeed it ever did.
It was a kick to have Bryant say he had never been asked about a cross-sport comp between Henderson and former NFL superstar wide receiver Randy Moss, who is my all-time favourite player in any sport.
And, of course, a book about an Oakland-raised ballplayer who starred for the Athletics just takes on poignancy. Where are the A’s playing in 2025? It is a mystery, Charlie Brown.
Bernice Carnegie, A Fly in a Pail of Milk: The Herb Carnegie Story
Herb Carnegie (1919-2012), by merit on the ice and the intangibles department, should have become the first Black player in the National Hockey League … right around the time that Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, and Johnny Ritchey ended the colour lines in baseball, and Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Marion Motley, and Bill Willis ended them in American football. However, the NHL was not as lucrative or safe as playing in Québec while starting a business career, and Herb had family considerations as a husband and father.
Bernice Carnegie made our job so easy when we met up to record at a Toronto library just before the end of the Before Times. The updated biography was released around the centennial of her father’s birth and it got his name out there for the Hockey Hall of Fame, which finally happened in 2022.
Dwayne De Rosario and Brendan Dunlop, DeRo: My Life
Fittingly, we were fairly free-form when DeRo and his coauthor joined us for a soccer-themed book right before FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. Acharya has written a feature for CBC Sports on De Rosario’s early life and his immersion in breaking with a crew out of Scarborough.
De Rosario whose lineage is West Indian, was central to refuting perceptions of Canadian soccer players in both MLS and Europe during his career. And, by all accounts, he is looking out for the next generation of footballers.
Perdita Felicien, My Mother’s Daughter: A Memoir of Struggle and Triumph
Felicien tells an African-Caribbean Canadian diaspora story, a precarious work story, and a story of overcoming intimate partner violence by focusing on the long road her mum, Catherine Felicien Browne, traversed to find stability in her adopted country. And, of course, Felicien Browne raised a daughter who became a world champion in the 100 hurdles and an accomplished journalist.
I felt some kinship here. Both Perdita Felicien and my sister came into the world during the Olympic year of 1980. My mum also has the same given name as Felicien’s mother, albeit spelled differently. My Mother’s Daughter was also released within days of my sister and brother-in-law bringing their daughter into the world.
Spencer Haywood, The Spencer Haywood Rule: Battles, Basketball and the Making of an American Iconoclast
The Basketball Hall of Fame forward made sports labour history when he and the Seattle Supersonics went to the United States Supreme Court in 1971 so he could be the first “hardship” early entry into the NBA. Haywood was a great and engaging guest and his life arc covers the Great Migration, challenges with substance use disorder that got him bounced from the NBA.
The struggles of Haywood were retold in Season 1 of Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. He was played by the actor Wood Harris.
Willie O’Ree, Willie: The Game-Changing Story of the NHL’s First Black Player
The Hockey Hall of Fame member joined us in October 2020 — the month he celebrated his 85th birthday. O’Ree collaborated with historian Michael McKinley on his memoir.
There is not much more I can say about O’Ree chatting to us other than to gush.
Karl Subban, How We Did It: The Subban Plan for Success in Hockey, School and Life
Our season première in 2018 was graced by a famous hockey dad meeting us on one of the coldest days Toronto has had in the last decade. The Jamaica-born, Sudbury-shaped Subban is an educator who sent three sons to the NHL: Norris Trophy-winning defenceman P.K. Subban, goalie Malcolm Subban, and five-season AHL d-man Jordan Subban.
It has been six years since we read the book and spoke with Karl Subban, and it was early days for this endeavor. So if I listen now, it could be as new to me as it is to you.
Additionally, let’s remember some of our NBA books, with authors who are white, but are not Ben Affleck.
Rich Cohen, When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season
There is a lengthy listen-along post that complements the appearance by Cohen in the 2023 finale. Open that in a new tab, if the need arises.
Cohen is to the consciousness of SportsLit as the Soo team is to the world of Shoresy: “So effin’ good.”
Jeff Pearlman, Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty
Neil Acharya sunk a few forms of capital into finding a way he and I could record while socially distanced. It was a rush to connect via phone with Jeff in Southern California for the first COVID-era episode back in 2020.
And, like everything he has put out, Three-Ring Circus has the foundation of deep research and the grasp of the emotional trauma that high-performance-on-demand pro sports inflict on the competitors. Or as Peter Gent once put it: “Winning took exceptional men and ate them.”
The early-oughts Lakers were a unique dynasty. Other basketballing dynasties had a rival to slay. Lakers versus the Celtics. The Michael Jordan Bulls versus the Bad Boys Pistons. Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors running into LeBron James and Cleveland in the Finals. Those Lakers’ most intense rivalry was between their post scorer Shaquille O’Neal and their shooting guard Kobe Bryant, with all due respect to the boned 2002 Sacramento Kings.
Doug Smith, We The North: 25 Years of the Toronto Raptors
Peak Basketball was achieved on June 13, 2019, when the Toronto Raptors won the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Change my mind.
Try to understand, please. Being a Raptors fan from Day 1 has meant having shade coming from all directions, and until ’19 there was no forcefield of F-you cred since they had yet to win the NBA title. It comes from Canadians who think they get a badge for being cynical toward the ‘local’ teams — hey, only the true believers get to act like that. From the #PleaseLikeMySport crowd, who dog-whistle meme cherry-picked comparisons about the supposed ability to play hurt. And from millennials who erase any fandom that existed before Vince Carter put on Raptors purple in 1999. As a Vietnam veteran who has a burned-out lightbulb would say, you weren’t there, man!
So yeah, it was a must to talk to Doug Smith, who has covered the Raptors from the start for The Canadian Press and the Toronto Star. I apologize unreservedly, and in perpetuity, for the monologuing at the start of the show. The rest of the ’sode is nothing but net, I hope.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
Ben Johnson should have kept his gold medal in 1988 due to irregularities in the testing program.