The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn is about the Brooklyn Dodgers is very good I think, along w/ his lesser known Good Enough to Dream, about his year owning a minor league baseball team. I’m enjoying A Whole Different Ballgame by Marvin Miller, about the labor movement in baseball right now. Thought David Remnick’s biography of Ali was worthwhile, as was Unforgiveable Blackness, about Jack Johnson.
Oops, sorry I included biographies! :smack:
I think that John Feinstein is the best writer currently writing about sports. He writes mainly about golf and basketball, with a few books on other sports. A few of the ones I have read and enjoyed are:
Living On The Black - about Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina
Next Man Up - a season with the Baltimore Ravens
Golf books
A Good Walk Spoiled
Caddy For Life
Tales From Q School
Open
Basketball books
A Season On The Brink
March To Madness
The Last Amateurs
Although I haven’t read it, Friday Night Lights is supposed to be very good.
I have read it, and Dewey’s right: Friday Night Lights is very good.
Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand, is also a good book. I know next to nothing about horse racing, and she makes it come alive.
The Last Shot by Darcy Frey
An excellent non fiction work about 4 inner city players trying to get out of Coney Island.
The Last Loud Roar by Bob Cousy with Ed Linn - An amazing book! Out of print, but worth looking for.
Celtics Pride by Bob Ryan - Covers the post-Russell years into the Cowens-Havlicek-Nelson era. Wickedly funny is places, gives a good luck at just how whacked out the NBA as an organization was in those days
Sorry, that’s a smartass answer. I remember one of my classmates borrowed this book from the school library sometime around 1970. Why I remember that, I don’t know, but every time I hear the word “lingo,” I recall this book. Strange how memory works.
More seriously, and not to completely waste a poste, I’ll add my vote to Ball Four, the Paper Lion, and North Dallas Forty.
Not a sports book in the sense of the others, but I can’t recommend Arthur Ashe’s memoir Days of Grace highly enough. I put it in here because it was written by an athlete, even though sports is a small part of the book. He was a class act. You said to leave out biographies, so this may or may not count (it’s as much an autobiography as anything else).
You may also be interested in some of John Wooden’s books. Inspirational life lessons. Or you may not be interested in that. Can’t hurt to post the option, though, can it?
The Big Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons is a great read for, well, basketball.
He breaks down his pyramid of all time players and gives a really interesting history and evolution of the game.
Ron Luciano: The Umpire Strikes Back, Strike Two, The Fall of the Roman Umpire, Remembrance of Swings Past and Baseball Lite.
(I’ve only read the first 2 but they made me LOL)
The Coach (A season with Ron Barassi) by John Powers.
In 1977 Powers was embedded with the AFL club North Melbourne, from the first pre-season session, every training run and every game. North had lost the 1976 grand final after winning their first premiership in 1975.
In a year of successes and reversals, North finished the season with a drawn Grand Final (the 2nd ever) and winning the replay against Collingwood who’d won the wooden spoon in 1976.
Quotes, quips and truisms of Aussie Rules (and probably any sporting club) are found on every page.
Heaven is a Playground is a fantastic book about the lives of street basketball players in New York City in the 70’s. There is a whole culture around it and the author Rick Telandar spent months immersed in it before writing his book.
A False Spring tells the story of the author as a high draft pick in baseball and his subsequent life in the minor leagues. He is only 18 when he goes pro and he learns his life lessonsfrom ballplayers and coaches in the lower minors. One of my all time favorite baseball books.
In general, sports books fall into this ranking:
Baseball>Golf>Basketball>>>>>>Football. I haven’t read a hockey book.
I am going through the suggestions and putting together an amazon list now, thanks everyone.
Golf huh?
Ok, I think I saw a golf book recommended upthread, I will give it a shot. I would never have picked up a golf book on my own, but what the heck.
I’m just referring to the quality of the writing, although Rick Reilly has written a couple of funny golf novels.