Best Damn Sports Books Period

Cafe Society
1

I’ve read so many of them over the years that I can’t keep the count, from Jim Bouton’s Ball Four to Ken Dryden’s The Game, from John Helyar’s Lords of the Realm to Nick Hornby’s hilarious Fever Pitch, but I always wonder about some gems out there that I might have missed.

So Dopers, what is/are your favorite sports book(s), and why did you like it/them so much? Novels, biographies, essays, encyclopedias, everything is welcome. Even books that are not mainly focused on sports but have a sports element, like Don De Lillo’s Underworld.

Keep 'em coming!

2

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn is a great book. Not just for Baseball fans, it is really a great book.

The Year I Owned the Yankees by Sparky Lyle is extremely funny, but only for baseball fans and probably only for baseball fans that watched in the seventies and early 80s.

If you can find it The Glory of Their Times : The Story of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter. I have a 1967 edition of it. I believe it was first published in 1966. The book is about 22 of the early greats/characters of Baseball. Including Rube Marquard, Fred Snodgrass and Sam Jones, while avoiding Ruth, Gehrig, Young, Johnson or Cobb. The writing is great, the book is fascinating. He interviewed these old timers and captured a take on the early game that would have been lost without him. (It looks like it has been published more recently, it also for no good reason, has a picture of Ruth, Gehrig and Cobb on the cover :confused: Marketing value obviously)

Jim

3

I’m not quite sure why I thought this was going to be about offshore betting sites.

4

If so, Drain Bead, I would have opened the thread in Mundane Point Spread Stuff I Must Share.

5

Veeck as in Wreck by Bill Veeck and Ed Linn. Veeck’s frequently hilarious account of his life as a baseball owner.

Why Time Begins on Opening Day by Thomas Boswell, Washington Post writer. A collection of excellent essays about baseball.

Bill James Baseball Abstracts , annuals published from 1982 through '88 by Bill James. Essays and studies that inspired and provoked thinking about baseball in new ways.

The Hundred Yard Lie by Rick Telander, about the corruption inherent in big time college football.

I heartily second “Ball Four” and “The Year I Owned the Yankees”.

6

Thats a thread I’d be very interested, but I think it’d probably tread close to the line of unacceptable to the Mods.

7

Oh, man, I haven’t read Veeck as in Wreck by Bill Veeck and Ed Linn since I was a kid. I completely endorse this as a great choice.

8

Not so much individual books, but I certainly recommend pretty much anything by the following two authors.

Rick Reilly, for one. He writes terrific sports books. Sometimes, they’re simple collections of his columns in Sports Illustrated (Life of Reilly, for example), or they are on a particular topic (Who’s Your Caddy, where he writes about his experiences caddying for various celebrities). But Reilly is always an entertaining read.

Similarly, Jim Coleman. Coleman has sadly passed away, but was an old-time Canadian sportswriter, almost (but not quite) in the Damon Runyon mold. He wrote about all kinds of sports, but his main love was horse racing–and indeed, the Daily Racing Form included one of Coleman’s items in its collection of memorable horse racing writing, Finished Lines. Still, Coleman could and did write about everything sports-related. For an overview, look for The Best of Jim Coleman, which is a collection of his columns; or for more horse racing-specific stuff, look for A Hoofprint on my Heart or Long Ride on a Hobby-Horse.

9

The Wrong Season by Joel Oppenheimer is a must for any Mets fan. Especially now. :frowning:

Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins is a great football novel. Hell, even as a Jets fan, I still use “Dog-ass Jets” all the time. :slight_smile:

10

I’ll second The Boy of Summer, and add **The Summer of 1949 ** and October 1964, both by David Halberstam. Wonderfully evocative books that place classic races - both involving the Yankees - one in their favor, one not so much - within the context of their times…

Overall, though, other than Ball Four, the book I enjoyed reading the most and that taught me the most about baseball was Pure Baseball by Keith Hernandez. He breaks down a couple of typical mid-season games (one goes to extra innings) pitch by pitch and uses that narrative thread to spin off on dissertations about the subtle, strategic decisions that happen constantly during a game. Can’t recommend it enough - it isn’t a fictional story, but it is totally engaging and educational…

11

How about infinite jest by David Foster Wallace? It’s a sprawling, majestic masterpiece novel - But at the end of the day, it is just a book about tennis.

12

I really liked The thinking man’s guide to pro football though it’s pretty dated now.

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Awright guys, thanks! I can’t wait to check into all your suggestions at my bookstore. Keep shooting!

For my part, I’ll also mention How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer, and America’s Game (on the history of the NFL), by Michael MacCambridge. Two really great books.

Oh, and of course, Philip Roth’s unforgettable The Great American Novel.

And if you’re into baseball and want to look at the truly incredible amount of various information one crazy guy can gather, don’t miss The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball. Costly, but amazing.

14

[QUOTE=RealityChuck
Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins is a great football novel. Hell, even as a Jets fan, I still use “Dog-ass Jets” all the time. :)[/QUOTE]

If you liked that, could I recommend Dead Solid Perfect, Life Its Ownself, and You Gotta Play Hurt by the same author. The last novel especially is laugh out loud good.

As far as non-fiction, I loves me some John Feinstein. A Season On The Brink and The Majors are especially good.

North Dallas Forty by Peter Gent was as good a novel as it was a movie.

15

If I Never Get Back by Daryl Brock is my favorite book of all time. It’s a bit of “historical fiction” featuring time travel, the Cincinnati Red Stockings and Mark Twain.

I’ve read it about 4 times, and my father and grandfather (both huge baseball fans) have read it a couple times as well.

16

Ball Four was my first baseball book, and i still love it.

I’m also a big fan of Moneyball. It’s a book that has often been misrepresented by its detractors, and is a fascinating insight into a particular method of running a major league ballclub.

If you like your sport writing done by a guy who has both the heart of a true fan and the brain of a dispassionate scientist, i suggest giving famous science writer Stephen Jay Gould a try. His Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville is a great collection, and the essay on why no-one hits .400 any more is an education in itself.

If you want to go even further into the arcane world of baseball stats, try Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong, written by the folks at Baseball Prospectus. It has excellent discussions about what numbers can tell us about the game, and is written in such a way that you don’t have to be a mathematician or statistician to understand it.

Men at Work, by George Will, is an outstanding study of the way that baseball players and managers go about their daily business. It really makes clear how much thinking is involved in just playing baseball, and Will writes very nicely too.

Another guy to recommend if you like excellent prose is Roger Angell. The words really flow off the page with this guy, and any of his collections of essays are worth reading.

If you’re a lefty like me, you might check out the writing of David Zirin. His latest book, Welcome to the Terrordome, is a collection of essays connecting sports with American politics and culture. I don’t agree with all of his arguments, but he’s certainly provocative, and offers a rather different perspective from many other sports writers, most of whom seem to try to avoid politics altogether.

If the economics and politics of sports interests you, check out Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit, by Joanna Cagan and Neil De Mause. It’s a really good study of the way that sports teams and cities negotiate the question of who pays for stadiums and other facilities.

And even the Yankee-haters (like me) should enjoy Diamond in the Bronx: Yankee Stadium and the Politics of New York, by Neil Sullivan. It’s as much an urban history as a sports history, and it does a good job of putting Yankees history in the context of New York history.

17

The Miracle of Castel di Sangro: A Tale of Passion and Folly in the Heart of Italy
“Through 1996 and 1997 bestselling author Joe McGinniss followed the Italian football season from Castel di Sangro, a small town nestled in the Abruzzi region of Italy. The motley crew that comprised the di Sangro soccer team in the early 90s masked an unparalleled prowess for playing soccer. This is the story of a team and a town with no aspirations, just a passion for the game, and how that passion allowed this team to rise to the top of the professional Italian soccer league.”

Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer

Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism
A look at how soccer failed to gain a foothold back in the early days of U.S. professional sports.

And I’ll second Fever Pitch.

18

Halberstam is a wonderfully entertaining writer, but be warned that his baseball books are rife with factual errors.

I don’t even like football, but the best sports book I have ever read - and it’s not even a close call, to be honest - is Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger.

The only book I rank it its league is Dryden’s The Game.

19

The Glory of Their Times is a great call.

Baseball and golf own this category when it comes to major sports.

A short list:

A False Spring Pat Jordan. An autobiography of a phenom baseball player whose career didn’t turn out as expected. Every kid who goes to college on an athletic scholarship should be required to read this. Hell, every kid period. Jordan is a phenomenal writer who now does work for a number of magazines.

Shoeless Joe, WP Kinsella. Better than the movie (Field of Dreams), which is saying a lot.

The Catcher Was a Spy, Nicholas Dawidoff. An incredible biography of Moe Berg, who played 15 years of MLB for a variety of teams. He was also a graduate of Princeton, the Sorbonne and Columbia Law School, and worked during WWII for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA.

Golf in the Kingdom, Michael Murphy. A novel about a man heading to an ashram in India. On the way, he stops in Scotland for a golf vacation, where he meets a mysterious golf professional and philosopher. A personal favorite.

Two comedies, Missing Links, Rick Reilly and Dead Solid Perfect. Dan Jenkins. Both about golf, Reilly’s is an homage to Jenkins’. Hilarious.

The City Game, Pete Axthelm. The playground basketball world in New York City in the 60’s and 70’s.

Heaven is a Playground, Rick Telander. Similar to the above, a story about playground basketball in the 70’s.

From less popular sports: Into Thin Air, John Krakauer. The ill-fated 1996 year on Everest from a climber who was on the mountain.

20

I haven’t read a lot of sports books, and most of those were about baseball. For that matter, probably 80 or 90% of what I have read I read as a kid with material written at about that level. I did read Drysdale’s autobiography, which was interesting, and I really like Joe Garagiola’s book Baseball is a Funny Game. Yeah, it’s like 50 years old (the copy I have is an old paperback of my father’s) and I’m sure some of the game has changed over the years, but it’s still a good read. If you like anecdotes, Peanuts & Crackerjack: A Treasury of Baseball Legends and Lore by David Cataneo is amusing. Great for quick reading as most anecdotes are a page or less in length. My parents got it for me as a birthday present more than a decade ago and I still read it from time to time.