Sports Books

Ok course, you need Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe" and "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy."

Actually, I recommend tracking down the "Best Sports Writing of the Century" collection, which contains the Boyle story and many other great pieces, including a hilarious Mike Royko review of a Keith Hernande autobiography (Cubs fans will get that one).

Coover's "Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of The Chicago Bears?" is good too.

Brilliant Orange is by David Winner, who isn't Dutch but wants to be.

I'd also search out ABC (Ajax Barcelona Cruyff) by Fritz Barend and Henk Van Dorp (translated by Mr Winner)

And I enjoyed Tom Cox's book about golf called nice jumper.

I forgot another book called oNly the Goalkeeper to beat which is a very good insight into the great art of being a keeper.

I'm still chuckling over the thought of Bob Wilson existentially shooting an Arab.

Carlo Cudicini used to play for Castel Di Sangro you know.

Right.

In this book, he spends a few weeks on the Professional Golfers Association tour back when they had Pro-Am tournaments sponsored by Bob Hope and when Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus were at the top of their games. It is absolutely the funniest non-fiction book I have ever read, and you don't need to be able to play golf to enjoy the bizarre anecdotes and the thoughtful analysis of why people play the game.

And speaking of golf, don't forget the UK book Tilting at Windmills: How I Tried to Stop Worrying and Love Sport by Andy Miller. It's an excellent look at the competitive professional world of miniature golf, and worth the read.

Also undeserving of its legendary status is "Albion, Albion" by an author whose name I forget, which is a footballing dystopia: the whole of UK is split into four opposing 'teams' (United, Wanderers, Rangers and Albion, I think, but I might be mis-remembering that last one) and it's all big fights and that, A Clockwork Orange with a few long balls thrown in.

Search AND destroy the series of pulpy novels published under Jimmy Greaves's name in the late 1970s: I've only read one, "The Ball Game" which concerns the adventures of England's star striker, Jackie Groves. He's in America and finds himself taken hostage by a load of militant women (I seem to recall them being gun-toting lesbians but I could be mis-remembering), and the story is every bit as unsound as that implies.

I thought Sun and Shadow was very very dull indeed. How are you finding it, Mike?

*Possibly only for those with a special kind of interest...

The Latin-American (and particularly Uruguayan) bias doesn't always give a representive picture of the history of the game, but nor does it claim to. It's just a guy who loves football trying to write like Garcia-Marquez and not really succeeding.

The interest for me lies in the chapters on things I knew nothing about. I've read many books on football history but very few cover Uruguay's contribution to the game. And it is a considerable contribution, albeit in olden times. Perhaps it appeals to West Ham supporters like me?

2 baseball books worth reading even if you don't care about baseball.

i saw that education of a poker player book the other day in town,i think at this stage its fairly outdated,its a basic strategy book but before people started paying attention to suited connectors and the like...

someone mentioned that big deal book the other day though,i might keep an eye out for it...

For reasons only known to the author, he belives the world cup is tilted in favour of the European teams to the detriment of South America. Yeah, mate, more countries you see. It might have been more prudent to argue from an Asian or African angle, but not South America mate. And he kept moaning about referees favouring European teams. Not sure Spain or Italy would agree after 2002.

Fever Pitch still makes me smile, laugh, nod in uttre agreement and get under my skin. The book has, I think, come to be representative of Arsenal fans cicra late 90s and beyond, when I remember it as a revelation. I usually re-read it every 2 years or so.

Only the Goalkeeeper to Beat read well the first time; a re-read was less favourable. The writer has such a chip on his shoulder about goalies being an oppressed minority that by the end, I don't take in the really interesting stuff on the peculiarity of the position and just hear his shrill whining.

Ajax-Barca-Cruyff seemed a bit lightweight - if Kuper was more tabloid, and more up his bum, he'd have written this. Addicted was good - the scene with Adams waking up having pissed himself was shocking, though perhaps more for it being a notable wart in a genre that tends to airbrush the interest out of its subjects. The baton was picked up by Tony Cascarino who did the definitive ghosted biography, which is less warts and all and just warts. An easy read that provides some genuine light on its subject and his lifestyle and by extention, that of his fellow players.

Galeardo's book verges on the pretentious, but redeeming factor number 1 is that by being a book of vignettes, it's a perfect toilet book. As is the series of pictures from the Hulton-Getty archive. Stuart Clarke's books are good for photos. I can't remember much about 4-2 which tells its own story; Garry Nelson's books are good from what I remember. Ryzard Kapucinski's The Soccer War is recommended though, but sport is only a small-ish feature of the book.

McEnroe's autobiog has promising moments, but backs off the good stuff, and reverts to genre with its 'things I would change about the game' ending.

There's a been a crop of books lamenting the growing increase of corporate power in football - David Conn's The Football Business is still head and shoulders out front here - Dave really gets across the moral indignation and repugnance at what was done to the game in the late 90s and the tawdry nature of the people running the game. The book that (kind of) launched a movement (more realistically, it gave a movement that was flaging somewhat directionlessly a direction in which to head and laid the foundations for the organisation i currently work for) and did make people become activists - in its own way, a kind of No Logo for football.

Ones to read that I haven't got around too yet - fancy reading David Yallop's expose of FIFA, and then colunterbalance it with the Sugden and Tomlinson books on FIFA - the latter really know their stuff inside out and have very good access and contacts. I've also heard some good things about Lance Armstrong's recent book - anyone read it?

I regret to inform you that ILB = I Love Baseball.

May the lord have mercy on Scott for his deceptions.

Thought this was very good:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8W2b27IIZD8/TvjBvs1m2mI/AAAAAAAAFYM/vN7-qx54kEo/s1600/1126_oag_knicks.jpg

The first Knicks title was slightly before I became a fan; the second one just as I started watching. (I was a Buffalo fan--they played a few games in Toronto every season.) I remember watching Frazier, and the mystique that surrounded him.

The book doesn't quite present the story in linear fashion--it's broken up with tangents, and reflections on the game today--so it took me about 50 pages to settle in. After that, great. What a group of personalities.

Another basketball book--you'd swear I'm a big fan.

http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387713525l/119035.jpg

My favourite player in high school, just before I tuned out in the late '70s (I remember his great couple of years with the Jazz; no recollection of his stint with the Celtics.) Sad story. Wonder how much he'd thrive in the three-point game--the book suggests he was made for it.

Great thread! Never seen it before. I keep hearing about Robert Peterson's Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams, really want to read that. David Maraniss's Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World is a marvel of multi-dimensional lucidity, although the subtitle is off: more like the way the world was changing the Olympics. May read his bios of Lombardi and Clemente, def his latest, about Detroit. Ditto The Red Smith Reader----good?

I've only read one football book in my life (about the Bears near-perfect season), but I just started Seventeen and Oh: Miami, 1972, and the NFL's Only Perfect Season. I can tell right away that I'm going to like it.

I lied--I've read three now. There was also Jeff Pearlman's book on the USFL.

Anyway, good book. The number of players from that '72 Dolphins team who suffered from dementia or Alzheimer's later in life is disturbing. From just after they won the Super Bowl:

Ten miles away, in Little Havana, fifteen-year-old Gloria Estefan, who'd been watching and cheering with her family, heard the same thing. "I remember going outside and lying on the roof of my mother's Monte Carlo and staring up at the stars and hearing the city exploding and horn-honking and celebration."

Ball Four -Jim Bouton
― scott seward (scott seward)

Seconded. And if you are a fan of boxing...

My View From the Corner: A Life in Boxing, Angelo Dundee & Bert Sugar

Lots of Ball Four talk here:

Baseball Books