The two I have read most recently

Pistol, which is about Pistol Pete Maravich, which for any NBA fan is a must read IMO.

Fever Pitch, which is about one mans obsession with Arsenal Football Club, which is hilarious and very interesting into the physche of male sports fans.

It's been reissued and you can get it on Amazon now. I just started reading it, and so far it's very good.

Another vote for "Ball Four." Two other good baseball books in the same vein are "The Bronx Zoo" by Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock (about the Billy Martin era Yankees) and "Seasons in Hell" by Mike Shropshire (about the Whitey Herzog/Billy Martin era Rangers).

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Next Man Up by John Feinstein. I read it last week and it is [censored] awesome. It's about the 2004 Ravens from the draft and through training camp all the way to the season's final snap. I hate the Ravens but this book is [censored] great.

Feinstein's A Good Walk Spoiled (about golf) is also a really really great book.

I read some of The GM in a bookstore a couple weeks ago. It's about Ernie Accorsi, the ex-Giants general manager and it was very good.

I resisted mentioning Hornby's "Fever Pitch" because the OP specifically mentioned sports he was interested in and association football was not one of them, and the But you have to thread is still fresh in the 2+2 memory.

But really, Hornby's book is worthwhile for any fan who has ever lived and died with a team over the course of multiple seasons. As a sports fan, you'll get the book, even if you don't recognize the teams, players, and events.

This is about gambling and sports. I really enjoyed it.

I got a pre-print of this, and found I really liked it.

"The last season" by Phil Jackson. It's his personnal diary from the '04 NBA season coaching a Lakers squad with 4 future Hall of Famers. Very interesting to see the inner workings of life in the NBA.

+1 for

7 seconds or less
Fever Pitch
Castel di Sangro
Moneyball (YOUK!!!!)/Blindside
FNL
Miracle of St. Anthony

some of Lupica's fiction is very good

Rick Reilly's "Missing Links" one of the funniest books I've ever read and far better than his SI columns.

The Mind of Bill James - half-SABR, half-biography

Fantasyland - one dude trying to win an "expert" baseball fantasy league.

Can I Keep My Jersey? - Paul Shirley doing his "My so-called career" thing.

Breaks of the Game - Halberstam at his best.

I'm currently reading Q school by feinstein and it is pretty entertaining so far.

I also really enjoyed a couple of golf fiction books by Troon McAllister (The Green, Scratch).

Moneyball

Wow, I thought I was the only person who ever read this. This is an awesome read. NOTE: it is fiction.

Early Feinstein is almost all good. A Season on The Brink, Good Walk Spoiled.

Later Feinstein is almost all bad. The guy's a good writer, but he grinds his axes pretty hard and that doesn't work well with this super smug attitude.

I really like Balls by Graig Nettles, or I did when I read it like 4 times 10 years ago.

Cobb by Al Stump is quite possibly the best baseball bio ever written.

Please tell me someone informed Plaschke about the existence of multiple sentence paragraphs before he decided to write a book.

Also enjoyed this one.

Missing Links is one of the funniest books ever, regardless of what you might think of Rick Reilly's work otherwise.

I don't know if you're interested in soccer, but "The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro" and "The Simplest Game" are recognized classics among soccer lit aficionados. "A Season with Tottenham" is less well-known, but a true gem as well.

I read Mick Foley's autobiography when I was 15 and that was the sh*t.

Can't believe this hasn't been mentioned.

Once A Runner

http://www.amazon.com/Once-Runner-Jo.../dp/0915297019

Catcher in the Wry by Bob Uecker

EDIT: I just looked this up on Amazon and under the section "Tags customers associate with similar products," "holocaust" and "racism" are listed.

I'm reading Moneyball right now and ran into this thread while I was trying to sniff out 2+2 opinion on the book (IMO it's great; I'd bet my life that Dynasty and Clarkmeister already read it).

Anyway, I remember the Kermit Washington "punch" like it was yesterday and was hoping to find a video to post. In my memory Washington was simply wheeling around (in the aftermath of a fight on another part of the court) and Rudy T simply ran into his fist. Seems impossible but that's my recollection of the incident. What I heard was that Washington was a hard working decent guy who got a bad rap and that Rudy T. never forgave him and it ruined his life. If you liked Moneyball I'll look for this one as worth reading.

And if anyone can find a video of the incident please post it.

~ Rick

seriously i was going to gouge my eyes out if this want mentioned 10000 times in this thread. best sports book EVER.

blind side was a solid book. learned a decent amount about the evolution of the NFL and the story itself was ok also.

first phrase that pops into my head when i think of that book is 'beaver shooting'.

loollol

My personal favorite is "Good Enough to Dream" by Roger Khan. Daniel Okrent's "Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game" and Khan's "Boys of Summer" are also great choices.