Stuff I Like: Sports Books Edition
There's not a lot going on with Chicago Sports these days, unless you want to talk about Felix Pie's Twisted Testicle. And while that might be an excellent name for a Fantasy team, it's something I'd rather not discuss at length.
So with that in mind, I'm going to start a new running feature: Stuff I Like. This might be stuff related to sports, might not. It might be a top ten list, it might just be a paragraph about one item in particular. You might see this every week, you may never see it again. Just be aware that it's NOT AT ALL like Oprah's Favorite Things. Nope, no sir. No free shit for the audience. Anyways...
To kick things off, I'm going to start with a list of Sports Books that I enjoyed. In no particular order...
1. Moneyball, by Michael Lewis. Most diehard baseball fans are at least aware of this book, as it brought the Stats vs. Scouts debate to the mainstream. (Think of it as a modern day "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine.) Anyways, the book is literally about how Billy Beane kept the Oakland A's in contention every year despite being handcuffed by a payroll that's a fraction of that of baseball's big market clubs. But in reality it's about finding value where others don't. And it's cool.
2. The Soul of Baseball, by Joe Posnanski. Joe's just a great writer, and his blog is a must-read every day. So when Joe decides to spend a year with 94-year-old Negro Leagues legend Buck O'Neil and then write a book about the experience, that's a book that I'm buying. Just a wonderful book about an everlasting optimist and his amazing views on life as he toured the country promoting the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City. This book has a ton of great stories, and lots of heart.
3. Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich. "The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions." The subtitle says it all, and now they're making it into a movie. I guess this isn't really a sports book, as it's basically about a bunch of geeks that count cards. But it's a real page-turner that involves fake identities, strip clubs, back alleys, and one pissed off casino boss. What's not to like?
4. The Numbers Game, by Alan Schwartz. "Baseball's Lifelong Fascination With Statistics." I guess I really should include the subtitles on all these books, as they expertly sum up each book in one sentence. (Go figure.) What the heck, I'll double-back now and give you the subtitles for the first two books on the list:
There. As for "The Numbers Game," it's a complete history of how statistics have been used and collected since the dawn of baseball in the 1800s. From Henry Chadwick and the origin of the box score to the Elias Sports Bureau to Bill James to Fantasy Sports to Stats, Inc and live Gamecasts on the web. And it's a lot more interesting and well-written than I can possibly make it sound. Speaking of...
5. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, by Bill James. The godfather of modern statistical analysis gives his take on, uh, everything baseball. Team histories, decade-by-decade comparisons, the top 100 all-time players at every position, random essays, win shares, and much, much more. Throw in an acerbic wit and common sense approach to baseball and you've got 998 pages of pure baseball bliss. Yes, its a 998 page baseball encyclopedia and I read it cover-to-cover. Twice. (Just kidding about the "twice" part, but I seriously could read it again if I had a lot more time on my hands.)
6. Now I Can Die in Peace, by Bill Simmons. "How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation with a little help from Pedro, Nomar, Shawshank and the 2004 Red Sox." Despite all the naysayers, I'm still a big fan of the Sports Guy and I read his work every day. He can be a bit repetitive with his jokes at times, but he's still laugh-out-loud funny without being a potty mouth, and that's really tough to do. Anyways, this is a collection of some of his best ESPN.com columns about the Red Sox, sprinkled with hilarious footnotes. When you put them all together, you get a real sense of the ebb and flow of what it's like to be a fan of a historically downtrodden team. As if I would know anything about that.
7. The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis. "Evolution of a Game." Another book by the "Moneyball" author, this time he chronicles how Lawrence Taylor, Bill Walsh, and the dawn of Free Agency turned the Left Tackle into a premium position in the NFL. It also chronicles how a extremely raw-but-gifted behemoth was plucked from the ghetto and dropped into a Division I football program with his targets set on becoming a multi-millionaire in the NFL.
8. Positively Fifth Street, by James McManus. "Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker." If you don't believe that counting cards is a sport then you certainly don't believe that poker is a sport. I'm fine with that, but this book makes the list anyways because its my list and that's that. This book toggles between the gruesome murder of Ted Binion and the author's own thrilling trip to the final table at the World Series of Poker.
9. God Save the Fan, by Will Leitch. "How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback have taken the Fun out of Sports (and how we can get it back.)" Man, I should re-think the whole subtitle thing. Anyways, the godfather of modern sports blogs (deadspin!) rants about what's wrong in sports and is often hilarious doing it. He's a little light on the "how we can get it back" part and a little over-the-top in places, but I'll I'm willing to overlook it because he's so wonderfully self-deprecating and I shared a beer with him about a month ago. Well, I didn't literally share a beer with him, as that would be pretty gay. But I met him at a book signing and a bunch of us went out for drinks afterward and he was pretty cool. So that's that.
10. Crazy '08, by Cait Murphy. "How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History." I haven't technically read this book yet, but it's next on my list and I had to put something Chicago-related on this list. (1908 - think about it.) I'll let you know how it is when I'm done, but the reviews I've read are promising.
Next Up: The Greatest Moments in Brian-Roberts-to-Cubs-Trade-Rumor History. Crap, somebody's already done that post. Check it out!
Till next time...