I have a new thread in my Hippodrome book's argument: the evolution of sports as spectacle.
The first sports chapter is about a baseball game played onstage the same year that “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was published. That took place during the fall playoff season when one of the New York baseball Giants committed what became known as Merkle's Boner: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle%27s_Boner
The next sports as spectacle chapter is either going to be about ice skating and ice ballet or about swimming. Either way, it'll be about the 1915/1916 season and how people wanted to see female athleticism at the Hippodrome more than they wanted to see the feminine beauty of Anna Pavlova.
The last sports chapter will be about jai alai. There was a last-ditch effort to popularize “the fastest game in the world” in NYC in 1938. This is right before the venue closes for good. Seems like it has something to do with sports betting and the good neighbor policy and the increasing power of Latino populations. Not sure yet, but it seems cool enough to try and figure out.