No doubt. An all-time classic right there. I enjoyed the stuff about Roger Kahn himself, then a young reporter on the Dodgers beat.
Boys of Summer: So great. Everyone remembers Robinson as the lion in winter but the chapter that always gets me is Carl Erskine and his son Jimmy.
Howard, how can you say "Unbroken" was better than "Seabiscuit?" This might lead to a book brawl. "Unbroken" almost seemed surreal. Granted, I had never heard the story before. But Seabiscuit took something a lot of people knew and added all kinds of depth and meaning.
Holy cow, that's a great endorsement. Another first-round book I haven't read.
I've tried to read Infinite Jest TWICE. Maybe the third time is the charm?
I know several people who read Infinite Jest the same way, putting it down and then picking it back up. They all said the same thing Jeff did: challenging, but rewarding.
Brian is a golf guy, but I'm wondering if this is even the best John Feinstein book of all-time. "Season on the Brink" anyone?
Stensaas, the golf guy, being Stensaas again...
the golf writers are squaring off.!!!!
Feinstein also wrote The First Major, on the 2016 Ryder Cup. Not his best work but really, really cool to read if you were at Hazeltine.
I love Leigh Montville! Spent a summer with him in Boston when I interned at the Globe and the time I was able to be around him and watch him work was delightful and a revelation. Even his Facebook posts these days are great, poignant and hilarious.
Who doesn't love Leigh Montville? And full disclosure, I haven't read this one on Teddy Ballgame. But it's going to take a lot for me to put it ahead of Halberstam's "Summer of '49."
Pick related to Casey's excellent choice: John Updike's "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.'' It's an essay about Williams's last game, turned into a slim little book a few years ago. Really good.
Ted Williams came to the American Legion World Series in 1980 when it was held in Ely, Minn. And there was a "press conference" in the school library with Williams, Bob feller and a spitball pitcher named Burleigh Grimes. Those of us in the "press" were smart enough to sit down, shut up and listen to them talk to each other for an hour. That's when i realized, maybe more than anything else, how damn lucky I was to be a journalist.
Thumbs up Randball. I remember when Posnanski and O'Neil came to the Metrodome, promoting the book.I was star struck with both of them.
Burleigh Grimes, the pride of Clear Lake Wisconsin!!
What's wrong with self-serving?
Shropshire is Steve Rushin -- with more chemicals added.
Has anyone read the Dick Bremer book? Game Used. I'm hearing good things about it.
High-five, Casey! I like that book a lot. It shows the power, the greed and the stupidity of baseball owners over the years.
Nice one, Casey! Sports labor books always make the owners look bad, and usually with good reason.
Resisting the urge to pick "Strange But True Baseball Stories," the first sports book I ever read … and saved until recently, when it started to rot on the shelf. I was eight at the time, and it was crazy stuff. Anyway, my choice is … The Boys of Summer … Roger Kahn’s 1971 classic … he covered the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s, then caught up with them as they went through their retirement woes. Put a human element on all the old heroes of Flatbush. Remarkable stuff.
My choice is a book that I love but also hated, at times, David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest'. It took me nearly nine years to read this book with dozens of false starts and stops. The story centers on a halfway house and a tennis academy and the tennis writing was so intriguing that it led me to also read Wallace's non-fiction sports writing on tennis where he profiled Roger Federer and Michael Joyce. The book itself is dense, fun, sad and enlightening, but it requires some patience! But I'm also choosing it because it changed my life by turning me into a gigantic tennis fan.
Here’s a surprise* I’m going with A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour by John Feinstein. Yes, there was professional golf before Tiger Woods. There was professional golf before Golf Channel. And in 1993-94 Feinstein traveled the country week-to-week, side-by-side with the best players of the pre-Tiger era. He wrote about them brilliantly; the wins, the losses, the pressure and the mind games. I didn’t read this book until after Tiger broke onto the scene and I attended my first PGA Tour event in the late 1990s. But the details are fascinating. I found myself wanting to be THERE with the players on Tour. Not just on the course. I saw that on TV. I wanted to KNOW these players. Well – maybe all of them but John Daly. It’s clear Daly and Feinstein didn’t get along. And I gotta say, I can relate. JD won’t even let me see his tweets anymore.
