If a banal real estate metaphor—that location is everything—can be applied more widely, then the location of the Chicago Sports Museum is telling. Situated on the seventh floor of a downtown shopping mall on the Windy City's Magnificent Mile, the museum celebrates the spectacle of consumer sport in Chicago. It is unabashedly commercial, both in the moments and men (almost exclusively) it celebrates. Adjacent to an eatery named after famed local broadcaster Harry Caray, the museum is in large part a diversion intended to attract and entertain diners and tourists.
Chicago was host to the 2022 meeting of the North American Society for Sport History, many of whose members have played a leading role in chronicling and critiquing the history of sport in the city (e.g., Gerry Gems, Gabe Logan, Michael Lomax). Regardless, the Chicago Sports Museum makes no claim to represent sport's role in urban and neighborhood development or...
