Best Sports Books (in honor of the Olympics)

What are they and why? Should the FS publish them? Have they already had a "fine press" publication?

My own choices at the moment would be "Beyond a Boundary" by C L R James and (much more recently) "A Corner of a Foreign Field" by Ramachandra Guha. They deal with cricket in the Caribbean and India respectively in British days, but they take in so much more, mixing excellent coverage of cricket with penetrating political and sociological commentary. So far as I can see, neither has ever had a Folio edition,

The Art Of Fielding comes to mind.

>3 NLNils:

Oh yes! I loved Tom Jones.

1. The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for a Gold Medal by David Halberstam, William Morrow & Co., 1985.

2. Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream by H.G. Bissinger, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1990.

>2 TabbyTom: These look really interesting, will check them out. Are you a fan of Joseph O'Neill's Netherland?

As a footy fan I would add A Season With Verona (Tim Parks) or maybe Among the Thugs (Bill Buford); Buford's book is a bit dated but well written.

(EDIT: Football in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galleano - top of the pile of sports books I've read and I would buy this in an instant if FS ever published it. Lyrical and fantastic. Forgot about this one in initial post.)

As a keen competitive sportsman, I'm surprised how few sports books I have really rated. Yes, enjoyed a number, but really loved them? Not many.

Two standouts though:

In Search of Robert Millar by Richard Moore
A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nicholls

The subject of the former is obvious - a biography of Robert Millar (written before he became Phillipa York) - the latter is the story of the first round the world singlehanded race (without stopping), won by Robin Knox-Johnston. Gripping!
Quite a few climbing books are up there, but not ones I'd classify as 'sport'.

I have not read a lot of books about sports but one I can highly recommend is Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis.

I follow baseball but I recommended it to a friend who doesn’t know much about the sport and he found it really interesting. Also a decent movie, but the book is better.

My favorite sports books:

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
The Greatest Game Ever Played by Mark Frost
And
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Brown

Moneyball is indeed excellent, as are the same author's The Fifth Risk, The Big Short, and Flash Boys. As for a look at baseball a hundred years ago, try Ring Lardner's You Know Me Al.

For a fun baseball book, try The Umpire Strikes Back by Ron Luciano. It would fit in with some of the other funny memoirs published by FS.

I was hoping to find some truly "classical" works regarding sports, written say 100+ years ago... but have had little to no luck. Basically, all the numerous books on sports are recent, which I suppose is not that much of a surprise. I did manage to find a reprint of Baseball book from 1911



There are classic works that deal with martial arts such as The Book of the Five Rings, but I consider that more military than sport :)

I'd buy Moneyball in a heartbeat. Few books have been as influential in my life -- I probably owe my career to the ideas it introduced.

>12 astropi:

Try The Art of Golf by Sir W G Simpson, BART. published in 1887. I have a nice slipcased edition published by Classics of Golf 2003

>14 N11284: Thanks. I forgot that golf is an Olympic sport now :)
You know, this year they're including surfing for the first time, which reminds me of this

>15 astropi: Image not displayed.

Barbarian Days by William Finnegan, wonderful book about surfing. The Death of Marco Pantani by Matt Rendell, really interesting read. And I'd echo the Friday Night Lights recommend above, just fantastic stuff. Also just finished This is Your Everest by Tom English about the 97 Lions tour - some really interesting content about the state of SA rugby in the wake of the iconic Mandela moment.

>16 N11284: still not displaying? I see it myself...

>18 astropi: I can see the image. The Art of Wave Riding and a striped box.

>18 astropi:
Image displays for me too.

>17 EuanM:
Death of Marco Pantani - good choice!

>18 astropi: >19 Hamwick: >20 wcarter:
Strange , still do not see an image. When I click on the icon I see it takes me to post images.org.
I'm using Safari on a Mac.

>22 N11284: I'm using Safari on a Mac.

I've had issues with Safari for a while - I still can't access FSD with it, for example. Switching to any other browser fixes everything.

Some fine suggestions. Have FS ever produced an edition of The Fight? I know Mailer is on a steep downslope in terms of reputation, but the Ali angle would make this a hot seller, you'd think (it's a fantastic book as well). Still on boxing, Nick Tosches Night Train (about Sonny Liston) is excellent as well.

Baseball inspires some great writing - The Natural by Bernard Malamud (whose other novels are also well worth a look) would be nice. On the non-fiction side, I loved The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn and, by complete contrast, the irreverent and slightly scabrous insider's account Ball Four by Jim Bouton. The former I could see as a FS book, the latter somehow not. Lardner a more likely candidate for an ironic look at America's Pastime (or former pastime, if viewing figures are to be believed).

Football in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano, or The Football War by Ryszard Kapuscinski (not really about football, but would continue their publication of his work) would both make fine FS editions.

Taschen do a wonderful edition on soccer in the 1970's. Well worth a look for anyone with an interest in that sport. The Age of Innocence- football in the 1970's

For cycling fans how about A Rough Ride by Paul Kimmage

I primarily follow baseball, so I can't speak broadly about sports books. However, the two best books I've read that were sports centric are:

Fiction: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Nonfiction: The Soul of Baseball by Joe Posnanski

A couple of years ago, Gish Jen had a book come out called the resisters that was very good, and somehow both baseball-centric and sci-fi.

>27 Jason461:

Oh, wow, The Soul of Baseball is a fantastic suggestion, just a tremendous joy to read.

>24 ian_curtin:

BallFour is another unforgettable baseball classic.

>12 astropi:

You might enjoy American Pastimes for a contemporary account of American sport from the 1930s or so

>24 ian_curtin: I plan to read The Natural sometime in the next few weeks. My wife just watched the film adaptation and says it’s excellent, but I want to read the book first.

Continuing the baseball theme, I would recommend The Glory of Their Times, oral histories from the earliest major league players. I’ve enjoyed what the Library of America has to offer, particularly Baseball: A Literary Anthology and a lovely small volume of John Updike’s Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu. The anthology contains my absolute favorite piece of sports writing, A. Bartlett Giamatti’s “Green Fields of the Mind,” which I feel is the kind of essay that is just begging for a fine press edition if it hasn’t already had one.

>29 JacobHolt: And you have just reminded me of Golf Dreams another lovely short work by John Updike.

>23 folio_books:

I still have this problem, too, Glenn, so I've been using Firefox on the Mac. However to fix an Apple bug, I've just updated the OS on my iPad, and now I have the same problem there ie I can get and use LT, but not Talk. Irritating, and I suppose I shall have to get Firefox on the iPad too. The issue seemed to start with the LT 'upgrade'.

>31 affle:
I use Safari on an iPad and desktop Mac Pro to access LT with no problems.

>32 wcarter:

What software version have you on the iPad, Warwick? I have just installed 14.7.1, having had no trouble previously.

Glenn and I spent some time, with help from LT staff, trying to sort the Mac issue. I've let the issue lie because Firefox is fine, and the likely Safari fix is to upgrade OS. I'm reluctant to move beyond my current 10.14.6 because some of my apps will give up the ghost.

>33 affle:
Still using 10.14.16 on iPad.

>34 wcarter:

Thank you. Be wary of upgrading!

>33 affle: >34 wcarter: Sorry for drifting off-topic but outdated devices have critical security vulnerabilities exploited in the wild. You mustn't trust your device with anything but the latest version.

>31 affle: The issue seemed to start with the LT 'upgrade'.

Ah, that's given me another angle on it. I usually blame everything on Safari. Currently using 14.1.2 with the same issues, if you were thinking in desperation an upgrade might solve it.

I am going to investigate Firefox as my current browser (for sites that have issues with Safari) is Vivaldi, a Chrome clone.