Monday, December 31, 2007

Good Books to Read

If you want to read some good books about sports, here's a shopping list of books that I've liked and that have been written within the last fifty years. I'll group them by sport category and let you choose what interests you.

When you start thinking about baseball books, the first two that come to mind are the two great books by relief pitcher Jim Brosnan who pitched for the St. Louis Cards and the Cincinnati Reds as well as at least one other team. Brosnan's books were the first sports books written by a pro player during his active playing days. His first book "The Long Season" chronicles the 1959 baseball season in which he toils for the Cards until mid season and then gets traded to the Cincinnati Reds. The book is still astonishing in that it goes behind the scenes of major league baseball and takes you into the bullpens of the clubs that Brosnan plays for, a gambit never used before in such a successful way. His second book, "The Pennant Race" covers Brosnan's year of pitching relief for the 1961 Cincinnati Reds, a year in which they won the NL pennant. Both these books are great fare for the serious baseball fan. Three other baseball books that are excellent reading are the biographies of Babe Ruth by Robert W. Creamer and Ty Cobb by Al Stump and Charles C. Alexander, Stump and Alexander's books being completely separate entities. Roger Angell's books about major league baseball beginning in 1962 and each covering five years in time make you feel like you're walking into Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, the Baseball Hall of Fame and W.P. Kinsella's Field of Dreams all at the same time. Angell's books are (and this list is nearly all inclusive) "The Summer Game", "Five Seasons","Late Innings" and "Season Ticket". Also there is Jim Bouton's "Ball Four", a zany trip through major league baseball as seen by one of baseball's more literate and certainly more irreverant pitchers. And finally there's Bill Jenkinson's "The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs" in which Jenkinson, in a well researched book puts forward the premise that if The Babe had played baseball in the 1980s, 1990s and in the early 2000s that he'd have hit over 1050 career home runs.

If football's your game, may I suggest Roy Blount, Jr.'s "Three Bricks Shy of a Load". This is an inside look at the 1973 Pittsburgh Steelers, the year before they won their first Super Bowl, but were nonetheless had a wonderfully entertaining group of guys on the brink of football greatness. I'd also recommend "Paper Lion" by George Plimpton, a chronicle of Plimpton's time spent as the prospective fourth string quarterback with the Detriot Lions during their 1963 preseason training camp. This one's a classic and does for football much of what Brosnan's books do for baseball. W.C. Heinz's book "Run to Daylight" is a very entertaining and illuminating book about Vince Lombardi and a week in his life as a coach of the Packers leading up to a big game with the Detroit Lions in 1962. Lombardi allowed Heinz to literally capture his every waking thought about football during this one week slice of time. Then there's Jerry Kramer's "Instant Replay" that describes, as seen through Kramer's eyes, what it's like to spend a year playing for Lombardi. That year was 1967, the last year that Lombardi ever coached the Packers.
Going on, every football fan should read H.G.Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights" to get a sense of how important high school football is the the fabric of Texas society. This gem chronicles the 1988 season of the Odessa, Texas Permian Panthers and their attempt to win the AAAAA Texas football championship, a feat that the Panthers had accomplished four times previously starting in1964. I come from the high school football hot bed of Western Pennsylvania and I have to say that Texas takes high school football fanaticism to a new level. There is also the great book by Jim Dent, "The Junction Boys" which covers the events surrounding Bear Bryant's first encounter with his new Texas A and M football team in the late summer of 1954. This one's a must read. You'll see what Bryant thought he had to do and did, arguably to the point of excess, in seeking to find which of his new players had the right stuff. You'll meet John David Crow and the "Sugerland Express", Ken Hall, who as freshmen in the fall of 1954 were not varsity eligible for the Bear's August hell camp in "dry as a bone" Junction, Texas, and you'll meet Junction survivors Gene Stallings, the successful coaching disciple of Bryant, and Jack Pardee, who had a very successful pro career for the LA Rams and Washington Redskins after playing for A and M and being one of Bryant's favorite players and who was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1986. Also on my list of football books to read are "Out of Bounds" by Jim Brown and Steve Delsohn and "One More July" by George Plimpton and Bill Curry. The Brown autobiography is great reading whether or not your a fan of the Cleveland Brown superstar and gives the reader some of Brown's interesting insights into the abilities of some past and present pro football stars. "One More July" chronicles Curry's trip to his last training camp, this one with the Packers in 1975 and gives Curry's unique and humorous outlook on what it was like to play pro football from 1965 to 1975. Plimpton and Curry really do a great job on this one.

I basketball's your sport then you really ought to read John Feinstein's book "Let Me Tell You a Story" in which he relates so many of the stories that the great Red Auerbach had to tell about his career in basketball. Also by Feinstein is his great book "A Season On The Brink". Bob Knight fans and detesters should all read this one. It tells an interesting story about Knight and the Indiana University basketball program and looks at a slice of time comprised by the 1985-1986 college basketball season. This is one of the best sports books I've ever read. And I'm a big Bob Knight fan, warts and all. Then there's "Drive" by Larry Bird, a book which gives lots of insight into the great Indiana State and Celtic superstars life and basketball career.

And then, with all due respect to all other sports such as professional tennis, soccer and ice hockey, there's high school and collegiate wrestling. This starts of course with anything at all written about Dan Gable. And especially Nolan Zavoral's great book "A Season On The Mat". This is an inside look at the Iowa Hawkeye wrestling program and in particular Gable's last year as a head coach in a career that established him as arguably the best college coach ever, in any sport, with 15 national championships in his 21 years as a head coach. To go with this is Mark Kreidler's "Four Days To Glory", a chronicle of the very end of two Iowa high school wrestlers careers in which they are both attempting to reach the lofty goal of four time state champion. The wrestler's names are Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere. They finish their high school careers and then get lured to Virginia Tech along with Iowa high school star Joey Slaton, Michigan high school superstar Brent Metcalf and Georgia star T. J. Leets to wrestle for former Hawkeye star Tom Brands. Suffice it to say that 2 years later Brands and his five super recruits are now at Iowa and are appearing like they might lead the Hawkeyes back to national prominance. A sidebar to this great book is that four of the five recruits just recently played a big role in leading Iowa to a big win over then top ranked Iowa State and then this last weekend led the Hawkeye wrestlers to a big team win in the prestigious Midlands wrestling tournament held yearly at Northwestern University. "Four Days to Glory" is a very good book about wrestling that's turning into an incredibly interesting reality session.

I've only scratched the surface with my sports book recommendations, but enjoy the ones that I've mentioned that sound interesting to you and have a Happy New Year. :)