Top Sports/Games Books?

[HDPM]

The movie thread got me thinking about it. What are some of the top sports/games books out there? (Excluding the poker ones we always talk about) I want to see what people say so I can put them on my reading list. There are some excellent ones I haven't read. I'll throw out a few for comments but have no solid top 10 list really.

"My Turn At Bat" by Ted Williams. Read my mom's autographed copy too many times when I was a kid to leave it off. We had to go to Comiskey, to a White Sox game, while Williams was managing the Senators to get his autograph in it. Perhaps the only reason to go to a vile White Sox game. I hope I am forgiven someday.;)

"Veeck As In Wreck" - Perhaps the best sports autobiography. Veeck was a very smart man who was ahead of his time. And well-read actually, given all the time he spent reading while soaking his leg-stump.

The Long Season(? I think it was called?) by Jim Brosnan. One of the first of its kind.

Fever Pitch - I didn't know soccer could be a sport before reading that. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Bobby Jones On Golf. Some excellent writing.

McGoorty. Interesting book. The best I have read relating to billiards/pool and the life surrounding it. You don't have to have any interest in those games to like it.

Fast Company by Jon Bradshaw. An excellent gamblers' profiles type book.

Hogan by Curt Sampson. Got a little rushed and shallow in places, but a good biography.

Some Miscellany : Best modern golf writers - Dan Jenkins and Charles Price. Best instruction book - Hogan's Five Lessons. Alex Karras's book "Even Big Guys Cry". Pretty revealing and honest. I remember it, unlike many sports books, so it couldn't have been all bad.

I left off about a million baseball books and classics like "Instant Replay." Or Plimpton's books. Or a lot of others. Also I didn't touch boxing, and there is some of that out there. Good stuff out there. So there is plenty of room to toss out the bestest in many categories.

[Allan]

I haven't read too many sports books but William Nack's Secretariat: The Making of a Champion is a great read. It starts out a bit on the slow side but once you get into it the book is amazing at showing how great this horse was.

Haven't read McGoorty's, just haven't gotten around to it. Playing off the Rail was certainly an entertaining read but I don't know if it is strong enough to be on a top ten list.

Allan

[HDPM]

Playing Off The Rail was good. It had a couple of excellent parts. McGoorty is a lot better. Get around to it.

[John Cole]

HDPM,

So many to list, but I'll keep it too a few. Keep in mind the adage "the smaller the ball, the better the writing." (I can't, though, think of any good ping-pong books.)

Golf Courses of the British Isles by Bernard Darwin

Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy (I think)

The Mystery of Golf by Arnold Haultain--one of the strangest golf books ever written

We've already listed so many baseball books here that I won't repeat the more obvious ones, except perhaps for Robert Creamer's biography of Babe Ruth. Some classic Ruth stories included.

Loose Balls by Terry Pluto, a riotous look at the ABA

Finally, the absolute best sports fiction is Fred Exley's A Fan's Notes. I don't think anybody here has read this one, but it's one of the great novels of the past fifty years, a retelling of Gatsby with the "real" Fred Exley taking the Gatsby role--and the narrator's role as well. It features an amzing cast of characters, most notably Mr. Blue, a man who loved two things in life, aluminium siding and cunnilingus.

John

BTW, agree completely with Fever Pitch

[Dynasty]

The book "Searching for Bobby Fischer" was considerably better than the movie.

[David Steele]

John mentioned the previous thread on baseball books, but
I really enjoyed:

The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter

after hearing about it here.

D.

[M2d]

Boys of Summer-Roger Kahn
any Roger Angell

[Sooga]

Certainly you've read 'Ball Four' by Jim Bouton.... a great book, even if you've never even heard of the sport. If you're just a pure baseball fan, you need to get Bill James's New Historical Baseball Abstract.

[Cyrus]

I remember understanding the game for the first time (i.e. understanding that I only thought I understood the game before that) after I read that book by the ex-1986 Mets first baseman.

[Ulysses]

First off, another vote for Fever Pitch.

A few very well known ones:

David Halberstam - Some gems like The Amateurs, plus a bunch of baseball books for those of you into that.

John Feinstein - A March to Madness, The Last Amateurs, Season on the Brink, a few others and of course a bunch of golf books for those of you who into that.

Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer - OK, more adventure than sport, but probably qualifies

And a few you probably haven't read:

Among the Thugs - Bill Buford - about soccer hooligans. Excellent.

God of the Rodeo - Daniel Bergner - about prison rodeo

and lastly, a really outstanding book:

Word Freak - Stefan Fatses - about competition Scrabble players. This was a really great read.

[Mash]

I agree, "Ball Four" needs to be on top of everyones sports/games book list.

Also Tom Lasorda's autobiograghy is a great read. Even if you are not a Dodger fan you will enjoy this book.