11 Questions for Dawson McCall
For this occasional series, I ask people to answer 11 questions about teams, players, rivalries that shaped them. Sports historian Dawson McCall is next.
This occasional series explores how sport shapes identity, memory, and belonging. Each guest answers the same 11 questions, naming the players, teams, matches, and rivalries that matter most to them. The series takes its name and inspiration from historian Eric Hobsbawm's observation that "the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people."
Dawson McCall is an assistant professor of history and co-director of Black Studies at Loyola University in New Orleans. He has written on boxing history in Kenya.
When you think about sports teams, what is the first team that really felt like your team — not just one you watched, but one you felt connected to personally?
The first team I supported as a child was the Boston Red Sox, however, the first team that I connected with thoughtfully was the ‘95-’96 Kentucky Wildcats Men’s basketball team.
Who was the first player whose name you memorized — the first one who really captured your imagination? What made them stand out to you?
Fernando Valenzuela. I watched him throw a no-hitter on TV when I was eight or nine, then went straight outside and tried to teach myself to throw left-handed (utter failure). It was my own little version of Fernandomania.
Did you choose the professional club team and league you support yourself, or did you inherit them from family, community, or circumstance?
I was a baseball fanatic as a child, so that was my choice, but rooting for the Red Sox was simply a product of being born in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. Later, living in Mississippi as a teenager, I got into basketball and identified with the Kentucky Wildcats because of their up-tempo, pressing style of play.
Does the national team you support tell you something about how you feel about your country and how?
When I watched the 1992 US basketball “Dream Team” at 11, my dad, rooting against the US because he liked underdogs, taught me sports politics. I am turned off by the US’s foreign policy, so now I support African athletes, especially Kenyan runners and Ghana’s Black Stars football team, because of its historical links to Pan-Africanism and African liberation.
Have you ever fallen out of love with a team or a sport? What changed?
In my late teens and early 20s, I learned about the resistance to integration in Kentucky and within the Red Sox. I didn’t know the Sox were the last MLB team to integrate until I visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum at 23. That ruined them for me.
For you, what is the greatest rivalry in sports history, and what makes it so compelling?
I love the rivalry between Kenyan and Ethiopian runners because the early history of East African running success in the 1960s (Abebe Bikila in 1960 and 1964, Kenya’s success at the 1965 All-Africa Games and 1968 Olympics) coincided with African independence
Who is the single greatest player of all time in that sport, in your view?
Kipchoge Keino because he had so much success at so many different distances (1500, 5000, 3000 m steeplechase), but my favorite former Kenyan athlete is Mike Boit.
Can you put together your all-time greatest eleven in your chosen sport? If basketball, name the five starters on your all-time basketball team.
I’ll go with basketball because that’s the main sport that I’ve played most of my life. My list is position-less and is based on a combination of their on-court success and off-court impact:
Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, Isiah Thomas, and Lusia Harris
What song best matches your team’s energy, rhythm, or attitude?
Running. Nyashinski: “Marathon Runner.”
What film best captures the feelings or memories you associate with sport and fandom?
”Hoop Dreams.”
Finally, just for fun: could you put together a metaphorical “starting eleven”—a team of eleven named people drawn from culture, politics, intellectual life, music, film, or elsewhere—arranged like a sports team?
Football: Dan McCall (G), Mariama Bâ (D), Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (D), Chinua Achebe (D), Mark Mathabane (DM), Bibi Titi Mohamed (CAM), Steve Biko (CAM), Lilian Ngoyi (LW), Ousmane Sembène (RW), Wangari Maathai (F), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (F).