Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture

"An informative read from first page to last"—Midwest Book Review

Get in the Game unfolds the many ways that sports shape culture, bringing people together in shared emotional and physical experiences and offering a platform for conversations about gender, race, money, and the human body, as well as the drive to compete and to win.

Sports serve as a major driver for artistic and technological innovation, community building, and debates about social and cultural priorities and norms. Produced in conjunction with the eponymous wide-ranging exhibition opening at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in fall 2024, Get in the Game offers an expansive view of the areas of contemporary culture where sports and art overlap to reveal beauty, power, emotion, and what makes us human. The book’s graphic-novel visual style brings together an array of voices and perspectives, featuring a foreword by activist, advocate and two-time FIFA World Cup gold medalist Megan Rapinoe; nine artist/athlete dialogues; a reprinted poem by Natalie Diaz; and the following essays: Jay Caspian Kang on youth sports, Frank A. Guridy on the stadium and its role in American cities, Sara Hendren on goalball and the history of adaptive sports, Theresa Runstedtler on race and mental health in sports, Bruce Schoenfeld on the data analysis revolution in baseball, and Seph Rodney on the competitive drive. The book features text-paired illustrations as well as representations of iconic moments in sports history and related activism by artist and surfer AJ Dungo.