“Nobody’s gonna remember how long it took. They’re only gonna look and see that it was done.” – New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on the use of eminent domain to build a basketball arena in Brooklyn.

And if it were not for tonight’s film, Battle for Brooklyn, how many would remember how long it took to build the Nets’ arena at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic, and the human cost as well?

I am a lifelong sports fan. I learned the language of Baseball probably before I could even walk and the language of Basketball soon thereafter. I’m fluent in American Football and can make myself understood in Hockey. I also have varying degrees of fluency in a number of the “minor” sports here in the US, such as Bowling (though I’m not as fluent in speaking Candlepin or Duckpin as I am in the more conventional Tenpin most of us are familiar with.

In their book Gaming the World, Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann use the languages of sports to offer a unique perspective on globalization. This is not a book that will be used to settle arguments on sports performances at the neighborhood pub. However, I can see it being used as the foundation of a Sociology class on Sports in Society, as part of a Cultural Anthropology class, or as part of an elective Political Science course work. (in all cases with some necessary supplemental information)