Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time

Another football season kicks off this month and with that in mind tonight, I’m posting one of my all-time favorite recommended reading lists - Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time.

Sports Illustrated released this list in its Dec. 16, 2002 issue, and I still have the original, dog-eared clipping in my “reading lists” folder in my desk at home. The list was compiled by the magazine’s editors “with love and reason, out of intense and sometimes unruly discussions,” and I’m passing it along to you tonight.

I’ve marked those that I’ve had a chance to read in bold italics. Have you had a chance to read any of them? If so, what did you think about them? Which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below. Here’s the list:

1. The Sweet Science by A.J. Liebling
2. The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
3. Ball Four by Jim Bouton
4. Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream by H.G. Bissinger
5. You Know Me Al by Ring Lardner
6. A Season on the Brink by John Feinstein
7. Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins
8. Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback by George Plimpton
9. The Game by Ken Dryden
10. Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby

11. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
12. Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
13. Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association – As Told by the Players, Coaches and Movers and Shakers Who Made I Happen by Terry Pluto
14. Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris
15. Heaven Is a Playground by Rick Telander
16. Levels of the Game by John McPhee
17. The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam
18. The Summer Game by Roger Angell
19. The Long Season by Jim Brosnan
20. Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer by Jerry Kramer

21. Everybody’s All-American by Frank Deford
22. Fat City by Leonard Gardner
23. The City Game: Basketball from the Garden to the Playgrounds by Pete Axthelm
24. The Natural by Bernard Malamud
25. North Dallas Forty by Peter Gent
26. When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss
27. Babe: The Legend Comes to Life by Robert Creamer
28. The Golf Omnibus by P.G. Wodehouse
29. About Three Bricks Shy… And the Load Filled Up by Roy Blount Jr.
30. A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley

31. Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life by Richard Ben Cramer
32. The Game They Played by Stanley Cohen
33. Veeck as in Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck
34. Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan and Herbert W. Wind
35. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrad
36. Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James
37. A False Spring by Pat Jordan
38. Life on the Run by Bill Bradley
39. The Red Smith Reader by Red Smith
40. An Outside Chance: Classic and New Essays on Sport by Thomas McGuane

41. The Unforgettable Season by Gordon H. Fleming
42. The Celebrant by Eric Rolfe Greenberg
43. Big Red of Meadow Stable: Secretariat, The Making of a Champion by William Nack
44. The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James
45. End Zone by Don Delillo
46. Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story by David Wolf
47. Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella
48. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
49. Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof
50. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy by Jules Tygiel

51. Laughing in the Hills by Bill Barich
52. Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting by Keving Kerrane
53. The Bronx Zoo by Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock
54. The Professional by W.C. Heinz
55. The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Definitive Record of Major League Baseball by Macmillan Publishing
56. A Savage Business: The Comeback and Comedown of Mike Tyson by Richard Hoffer
57. The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence S. Ritter
58. The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball: An All-Star Lineup Celebrates America’s National Pastime by John Thorn
59. Among the Thugs by Bill Buford
60. Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball by John Helyar

61. The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop. By Robert Coover
62. Days of Grace by Arthur Ashe
63. Out of Their League by Dave Meggyesy
64. Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf by John Updike
65. In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais
66. They Call Me Coach by John Wooden with Jack Tobin
67. Cosell by Howard Cosell
68. Down the Fairway by Bobby Jones and O.B. Keeler
69. Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure by Alexander Wolff
70. The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams by Darcy Frey

71. Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger
72. Out of the Bunker and Into the Trees by Rex Lardner
73. The Fight by Normal Mailer
74. Only the Ball Was White by Robert W. Peterson
75. Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime of Golf by Harvey Penick with Bud Shrake
76. Whatever Happened to Gorgeous George by Joe Jares
77. Annapurna: A Woman’s Place by Arlene Blum
78. The Great American Novel by Philip Roth
79. Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano
80. The Story of American Golf: Its Champions and its Championships by Herbert Warren Wind

81. Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey into the Secret World of Figure Skating by Christine Brennan
82. Farewell to Sport by Paul Gallico
83. Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times by Thomas Hauser
84. Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbably Saga of of the New York Met’s First Year By Jimmy Breslin
85. The Complete Book of Running by James F. Fixx
86. The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams
87. Only a Game by Robert Daley
88. The Joy of Sports: Endzones, Bases, Baskets, Balls and the Consecration of the American Spirit by Michael
89. The Lord of the Rings: Power, Money and Drugs in the Modern Olympics by Vyv Simson and Andrew Jennings
90. Road Swing: One Fan’s Journey into the Soul of American Sports by Steve Rushin

91. Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy
92. Game Misconduct by Russ Conway
93. No Cheering in the Press Box by Jerome Holtzman
94. Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education by Murray Sperber
95. The Harder They Fall by Budd Schulbert
96. The Tumult and the Shouting: My Life in Sport by Grantland Rice
97. SportsWorld: An American Dreamland by Robert Lipsyte
98. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings: A Novel by William Brashler
99. The Miracle of Castel di Sangro: A Tale of Passion and Folly in the Heart of Italy by Joe McGinniss
100. Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters by Joan Ryan

It’s my understanding that several of these books are no longer in print, so don’t feel too bad if you can’t find some of them on Amazon. You might want to try eBay instead. For more detailed information about these books, read the original Sports Illustrated story at http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/features/2002/top_sports_books/1/.