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| re: What's the best sports book you've read? For me, though: Moneyball The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship Summer of '49 The Education of a Coach Just off the top of my head. Halberstam was the man. We lost him way too soon. Reply • Back to Top |
| The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America Good shite right there. Reply • Back to Top |
| How Soccer Explains the World is also good. Also, Among the Thugs was a great read. Reply • Back to Top |
Posted by JDM1992 on 12/11 at 8:26 am to Porter Osborne Jr This post was edited on 2/17 at 6:31 pm Reply • Back to Top |
quote: Great read. As are Mathletics, Stumbling on Wins, and Baseball Between the Numbers. I need to post on this thread from home where I can stand in my library and pull books off the shelves. I just remembered Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville, which was by Stephen Jay Gould and forwarded by David Halberstam. Great fricking read. This post was edited on 12/11 at 8:30 am Reply • Back to Top |
| The ones I can remember off the top of my head that I enjoyed: Moneyball Blind Side Soccernomics Meat Market Bruce Feldman's book about Miami It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium (I knew going in it was melancholy, so I wasn't surprised by the tone that turned most people off) Chuck Klosterman has a collection of his sports essays available for Kindle, I've read and enjoyed most of them. One of the worst ones I've ever read was by Mike Lupica. It was fiction, but it was so bad I don't even remember the name. A fake NFL story. Reply • Back to Top |
| Boys Will Be Boys - Dallas Cowboys When the Game Was Ours - Larry & Magic Playing for Pizza Reply • Back to Top |
quote: what is painfully obvious to me is that people view Moneyball as some sort of revelation in MLB. billy bean did not invent statistical evaluation of players as he infers. and scouts are not an inferior way to evaluate talent as he infers. i get that oakland doesn't have enough money to do both but the teams that actually win pennants and stuff do both. as far as taking college pitchers over hi-school kids he was lying. that's right, oakland got lucky with some draft choices as their stud pitchers in years they actually excelled. lastly, as far as valueing outs over the small ball strategem of advancing runners people completely ignore that he is in the american league. any perceived advantage (backed up by his own statistical choices) of that goes away in the NL. a manager in a one run game in the 9th inning with a runner on first with no outs is a fool not to advance that runner. if he hasn't practiced bunting he's fricked. i would be much more impressed with a book written by tony larussa than billy bean. he doesn't own the market on statistical evaluation of players and never has. he propelled a few good years of success (based on lucky pitcher selection) into an expose' of "how he is smarter than all the other gm's" and making big bucks from it. good for him. Reply • Back to Top |
quote: Ed Conroy, basketball coach at Tulane, is a cousin of Pat Conroy and coached at the Citadel prior to coming to Tulane. /csb Reply • Back to Top |
quote: I forgot about this one. I read that too and I loved it, mainly because I could relate to the book. Reply • Back to Top |
quote: What's painfully obvious from your post is that you didn't read Moneyball. Reply • Back to Top |
quote: lolwut Reply • Back to Top |
Posted by Master of Sinanju on 12/11 at 8:41 am to Porter Osborne Jr The Glory of Their Times Ball Four Distant Replay The Unforgettable Season Reply • Back to Top |
| The Game by Ken Dryden Ball Four by Jim Bouton Those are still the gold standards for athlete memoirs. Next Time Let's Not East the Bones by Bill James Scorecasting Soccernomics How Soccer Explains the World Loose Balls Eight Men Out Crazy '08s Fantasyland The Blind Side Reply • Back to Top |
| Oh, and my bible is Earl Weaver on Strategy. Reply • Back to Top |
quote: He gets his opinions from Joe Morgan. Reply • Back to Top |
| Breaks of the Game Summer of 49 Seven Seconds or Less Scorecasting How Soccer Explains the World Dream Team Reply • Back to Top |
really liked this series as a kid:  Reply • Back to Top |
| In and out of the rough John Daley Reply • Back to Top |
| Some very solid recommendations in here, some WTH ones. I like the history of sports, so titles like 'Let Me Tell You A Story' and 'When Pride Still Mattered' really resonate with me. If I'm looking for a fun read, the rollicking tales of wild man coaches (Season on the Brink, Bootlegger's Boy) really hit the spot. If you want an excellent book that will make you think about sports, I recommend 'Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It' -- it's getting hard to find, but it raises real questions about the underlying assumptions involved in race, sports, and how we organize competition. Reply • Back to Top • Refresh |
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