Great Sports Books
 

Lance Armstrong's biography
Ultramarathon Man

hopefully you guys have some soccer books to add to this list. god please no baseball books, about 70% of sports books at borders bookstore are baseball.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Damn, I was going to say Fair Ball by Bob Costas, but that's a book about baseball

But I guess I'm mentioning it now anyway, oh well. It's a really good book

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Moneyball is fantastic, still about baseball, but much more about finance and the theory behind putting a team together.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Moneyball
Ball Four
Friday Night Lights
The Education of an American Soccer Player

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the miracle of castel disangro and I will also second friday night lights and ball four

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Not sure if anyone else has read this, but I loved the Miracle of St. Anthony's

Re: Great Sports Books
 

i thought lance armstrong came across as being ultra-cocky in his autobiography.

no one hates baseball more than i do (considering i live with three red sox fans who watch every fricken' game), but moneyball is by far the best non-fiction book i've ever read.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

pinnacle is a good sports book. Bodog is not as good

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Does Roddy Piper's book count? It was funny.

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If wrestling does count, Mick Foley/Mankind/Dude Love/Cactus Jack's book is great even for non-wrestling fans.

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yea his first two are good.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

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pinnacle is a good sports book. Bodog is not as good

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agreed...my betting on bodog couuld singlehandedly change the outcome of ANY game in favor of the team i betted against.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

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Not sure if anyone else has read this, but I loved the Miracle of St. Anthony's

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Yea I agree. Also I thought Next Man Up was a good book.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

I really enjoyed "The Inner Ring" a Mike Tyson bio written by one of his former drivers. Very entertaining, read the whole thing in one night. A few choice tidbits:

- MT's favorite food is Captain Crunch
- MT once kicked Wesley Snipes' ass in a nightclub bathroom

Can't remember much else, read it almost 10 years ago, check it out, def. worth the read.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

When I was young I liked reading all the Matt Christopher books, do those count?

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In The Corner: Boxing trainers talk about their art.

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'Loose Balls', about the ABA (recommended by Bill Simmons) is LOL hilarious.

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Baseball between the numbers
Baseball Prospectus 2006

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Bruiser,

I think you might like Once A Runner by John L. Parker.

If pool counts as a sport, you might enjoy Playing Off The Rail by David McCumber, or The Hustler and The Color Of Money by Walter Tevis.

scrub

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Best football/soccer books that I've read are:

The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro, Joe McGinniss
Futebol, Alex Bellos
Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby

All excellent reads.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Any John Feinstein book, particularly A Good Walk Spoiled (golf), although it's somewhat dated now.

Also Missing Links, a golf novel, and Slo Mo, a basketball novel, both by Rick Reilly. And this is from someone who despises fiction. (I don't actually like Reilly's SI column that much anymore; those books were written when he was more of a funny guy and less of a crotchety old sportswriter.)

Recently
 

I thought Richard Williams was only a brilliant music critic, from reading his stuff in the Melody Maker of yore, about rare 45s, the Velvets, RnB, and such. But he is an outstanding sports writer as well.

The Death of Ayrton Senna

The Perfect 10

Re: Recently
 

thanks for suggestions guys. I read ball four when i was in elemantary school and thought it was pretty good at the time. Wasn't so sure it would be a great book to bring up. I still remember one really funny part, where he says paraphrased "it would be great if the other team had a plane crash, no serious injuries though, maybe just a few broken legs, sprained ankles..."

"
no one hates baseball more than i do (considering i live with three red sox fans who watch every fricken' game), but moneyball is by far the best non-fiction book i've ever read. "

ditto on all counts except for the "best non fiction book i've ever read" part. you really need to read more books. His other book btw, Liar's Poker is a really great book, again like baseball i have no interest in the bond market but he's a great writer.

Re: Recently
 

Bruiser,

I would highly reccomend the game of their lives. Based on the cover it appears that they are making a movie about it, but the book follows the surviving players from the US national team in 1950 that beat England 1-0, as well as going through the game. It is an excellent book that tells a good story of a bunch of amateur footballers. It not only tells a story of a great match but the description of how things were in the US back in the day is fantastic.

Jared

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Four of my favorites...

The Game Behind the Game
ESPN: The Uncensored History
Long Bomb (behind the scenes of the XFL)
"You're Okay, It's Just A Bruise" (by the Raiders team doctor in the early 80s)

Re: Great Sports Books
 

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Ball Four


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I read that 2 years ago and loved it.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Strongly disagree with "any" Feinstein book.

Feintein is a [censored] who as of late can't keep his bents out of his books. A Good Walk Spoiled is really good though. He was slightly spoiled to me because he's come off as such a pretentious windbag in his local radio spots.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

One that hasn't been mentioned yet, for golf fans: "Divots, Shanks, Gimmes, Mulligans and Chili Dips" by Glen Waggoner. It's a little dated now, but still has some great chapters.

Mick Foley's "Have a Nice Day" and "Foley is Good (and the real world is faker than wrestling)" are both fantastic, as has been mentioned.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Tall Tales is a great book about the early years of the NBA.
The Thin Green Line is a great book about a golfer with a 2 handicap taking a shot at the Mini Tours and Q School.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Runner Runner,

I'm going to look into that golf one, sounds interesting. I'm a 2 HDCP and have a ton of friends toiling in the minitours. I know they are way WAY better than me, so what that guy's thinking, I don't know.

Anyway, I'm going to humbly suggest The Jordan Rules, the best basketball book this side of "Loose Balls", which was already mentioned. Sam Smith hit the jackpot by cataloging a team that went on to win their first title that year. Very good behind the scenes look at a team - their personalities, chemistry, etc. It's telling that Jordan wouldn't talk to Sam Smith after its release, as the book went a long way to tearing down MJ's carefully crafted public image.

Also, as Dids noted, "A Good Walk Spoiled" is a fine read if you're into golf. Feinstein's other golf books are OK, but he seems to be given to long-winded backstories, whereas this one doesn't do that as much.

EDIT: RR, I did try to look your book up, it's called "The Fine Green Line". Link here.

EDIT2: In the course of looking up that book, I was reminded of Who's Your Caddy?. Some hit and miss chapters in there, but it's worth the buy for the Dewey Tomko chapter alone. The Donald Trump one is excellent as well...it pretty much wrote itself as Trump is a self-promoting spaz.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Sports books I've read and liked:

Loose Balls
Tall Tales
Moneyball
Ball Four
anything by/about John Wooden
Harvey Penick's Little Red Book
Friday Night Lights
My Losing Season
The Smart Take From The Strong
Foul Lines
Hang Time
Rebound

Re: Great Sports Books
 

The book by Eliot Asinof about the Black Sox is very good. Can't remember the title right now.

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Hoop Dreams is awesome as well.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Allow me to second "The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro." Compelling story, fairly well written, and a very interesting look into club soccer in Italy.

Regarding Feinstein, I can't stand the guy (Dids' post pretty much sums it up for me) and think he's terribly overrated. However, he has excellent access and if you are interested in the subject of whatever book of his you happen to pick up, then you'll enjoy the book (one exception is "The Punch," about Kermit Washington and Rudy Tomjanovich. I thought there wasn't nearly enough material for a full book, and yet Feinstein milked it for over 200 pages). I really enjoyed his recent book "Let Me Tell You A Story," which was written with Red Auerbach, but I'm a huge Celtics fan, so your mileage may vary.

The Bill Reynolds books I've read I've enjoyed quite a bit: "Fall River Dreams," "Glory Days," and "Cousy." A quick check on Amazon shows that he's written a lot of stuff on sports cars and bodybuilding, neither of which interest me, but I can vouch for those three, at least. "Fall River Dreams" is a season-long story of a high school basketball team in Massachusetts, with some interesting cultural and social background as well. "Glory Days" is, if I recall correctly, a memoir of sorts, with a focus on why sports mean so much to us.

If you're an NBA fan, I recommend "48 Minutes" by Celtics beat writer Bob Ryan and Cavs beat writer Terry Pluto. It basically covers everything about one NBA game: the days leading up to it, the actual game itself, and then the postgame. It was written in the 1980s. I found the behind the scenes stuff fascinating, and I enjoy the play by play analysis of the game, too.

Sports books and philosophy books are pretty much the only books I own (other than poker/bridge/backgammon strategy texts). If I think of it, I'll check the shelves tonight and see if I've forgotten any of my favorites.

-McGee

Re: Great Sports Books
 

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The book by Eliot Asinof about the Black Sox is very good. Can't remember the title right now.

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That would be "Eight Men Out" an excellent book and much better than the movie.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

"And the crowd roared" is kinda fun.

Has great moments in sports and comes with a CD that has their "calls"

Re: Great Sports Books
 

I'm not a golfer but enjoyed 'Dead Solid Perfect'.

Warning baseball content: 3 Nights in August, Moneyball, Men at Work

/baseball content

Friday Night Lights

Long out of print, but worth finding: I am Third, by Gale Sayers with (somebody I can't remember).

I read it several times as a kid. The movie "Brian's Song" was based on the chapter entitled 'Pick'.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

Friday Night Lights is pretty damn good.

I thought the Punch was interesting, mostly because it was like "let's take this one thing and build a book out of it" and I think he almost pulled it off.

The Feinstein I really can't stand is his patriot league one, because it's so [censored] preachy abou this attitude about college sports.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

"The Last Amateurs" was the Patriot League one. It's unreadable. I tried twice.

Re: Great Sports Books
 

The First Sports book I ever read remains one of the best:


The Game by Ken Dryden.



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