Exploring the complex issues of class and gender relations, community building, and sport reform, For the Love of the Game analyses how local culture shapes the meanings of sport and examines the tensions that exist when athletes and sports teams become important symbols for the community.

Nancy Bouchier traces the increasing importance of amateur sport to Woodstock and Ingersoll, two small nineteenth-century Ontario towns, revealing its intricate ties to urban boosterism and middle-class culture. Focusing on civic holiday celebrations, the establishment of organized clubs for cricket, baseball, and lacrosse, and the rise of spirited urban sports rivalries, Bouchier shows that small town interest in sports was much more than a pale imitation of the sporting life of Canada's major urban centres.