The Literature of Soccer

In honor of the World Cup, a reading list.

The World Cup if the World Cup was Full of Writers

Philip Roth - goalkeeper.

Enjoy.

Boxing...

...and poetry.

The Winter Olympics in Fiction

A brief survey.

Football Men

100 years ago.

Top 10 Sports Books of All Time

The list, care of the Guardian.

Best Books of Soccer Literature

The list, care of Flavorwire.

15 Best Basketball Books Ever Written

The list, care of Dime Magazine.

20 Best Non-Fiction Baseball Books Ever

The list, care of Esquire.

5 Baseball Books You Owe Yourself to Read This Summer

The list, care of Sports Illustrated.

The Tim Tebow Poem

ESPN's Rick Reilly wrote a sports poem so bad it changed the way I see the world. In the chaos of our new sports media dystopia, we hold a handful of gray ash and wonder: how did this happen?

From a story on SB Nation...

And now the poem.

How did this happen? I don't pose this question with the intent to answer it. I am asking it sincerely and earnestly: I genuinely want to know how, in the year 2013, Rick Reilly and the so-called "Worldwide Leader in Sports" published a poem so ham-fisted it barely belongs in a high school newspaper. This is my public and heartfelt plea for answers in a world I no longer understand, a message in a bottle that I'm throwing in the general direction of Bristol, Connecticut: how in the living fuck did this see the light of day?

How many editors died or quit or threw themselves out 12-story windows in order for this childishly amateur work -- and I use the word "work" as loosely as possible -- reach the viewing public? Who was the brow-beaten chump who said, "Sure, okay, Mr. Reilly, let's run with this"? Or is there no brow-beaten chump with the misnomer of "editor" at all? Does Reilly truly have the unfettered freedom to publish without an editor? I'm not kidding: if you work or worked at ESPN and can offer me insight into this, please email me or explain that peculiar alchemy in the comments.

The Surf Riders of Hawaii

A rare surfing book about surfing in the early 1900s is expected to do well at auction.

From a story in the Denver Post...


The book is one of eight made by hand by A.R. Gurrey Jr. between 1911 and 1915. Gurrey is considered the father of surf photography. The book helped spread surfing's appeal from Hawaii to the mainland. 

It is composed of six leaves of heavy brown woven paper, with eight mounted gelatin-silver photographs of native Hawaiians surfing Waikiki. Among them is Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic medalist swimmer who helped popularize the sport. 

There are three pages of text featuring eight black-and-white silver prints and the poem "Childe Harold" by Lord Byron.

The Idiot's Guide to Writing a Baseball Book

The Daily Beast offers some tips.

From the story...

Let’s say you’re a young baseball beat writer itching to land a book contract. You cover a team that few book editors in New York care about—the White Sox (not the Cubs) or the Twins (no explanation necessary)—and have never fit in among the trendy sabermetrics crowd. Ghostwriting is not your thing, and you find that all the great dynasties have already been exhaustively dissected by brand-name authors. What’s an ambitious writer to do?

Never fear, there’s still a surefire path for securing a book deal. Simply pick a year—any year, really—and make a case for why that baseball season stands out from all others. Follow one of the templates below and you’ll ink a deal in no time.

Declare Your Chosen Year the Best in Baseball History

Does your chosen year include any combination of the following: record-breaking performances, tight pennant races, controversy, a World Series that went the distance, a slew of future Hall of Famers in their prime? If so, then your year was not merely great; it was the best ever—an assertion that you must trumpet in your book’s subtitle and defend vigorously in the opening chapter. (You can drop it entirely afterward.)

Got Football Withdrawl?

Here are some football books to tide you over to next season.

10 Terrific Football Books

The list, care of the Los Angeles Times.

5 Great Books About Baseball

The list, care of Sports Illustrated columnist Joe Posnanski, on the Browser.

A Literary Guide to the NFL Post Season

The guide, care of New York Daily News.

From the piece...

4. Washington: With uncommon poise to match his prodigious talent, rookie Robert Griffin III deserves all the praise he gets. However, the team’s fortunes may ride just as much on their unassuming and bruising rookie running back Albert Morris. As this unlikely duo rushes forward into the future, they must be careful because they hold the fragile hopes and dreams of a delicate fanbase in their hands.
Literary Equivalent: “Of Mice and Men” (John Steinbeck)

5. Seattle: The Seahawks may very well be the most feared team heading into the playoffs, but they remain vulnerable away from home. Can Russell Wilson and his crew survive an extended road trip and return home victorious?
Literary Equivalent: “The Odyssey” (Homer)

Archibald Sharp: The Greatest of the Victorian Bicycle Engineers

You expected, perhaps, someone else?

The great Peter Harrington book shop digs deep into a great old book on bicycles, here.

The Great Literary History of...Hockey?

Indeed.

From a piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books...

Faulkner never again wrote about hockey. As far as we know, he never attended another NHL contest. Still, "Innocent at Rinkside" resonated because, for so long, the literature of hockey was "oddly limited," as George Plimpton put it, "odd because its world [...] is rife with storytellers and legend-keepers, and because hockey has a long and absorbing history."

This was true in Canada, where the rink is sacred ground, as well as America. Indeed, while the likes of Ring Lardner, Jack London, A.J. Liebling, P.G. Wodehouse, Norman Mailer, Fred Exley, Bernard Malamud, W.C. Heinz, John McPhee, Dan Jenkins, Donald Hall, Philip Roth, David Halberstam, Willie Morris, and Plimpton himself (among many others) were creating a small, vital, sports-lit cannon that revolved about baseball, boxing, football, basketball, horse racing, golf, and the Olympics, there was no must-read hockey novel, no classic memoir, no go-to oral history. Only in the works of Mordecai Richler could readers catch glimpses of the ice. (Hollywood made one contribution: Slap Shot (1977), with an uproarious screenplay written by Nancy Dowd based on her younger brother's minor-league hockey experiences. The next year, Dowd won the Academy Award for Coming Home.)

Cricket's Rich Literary Vein

I didn't even realize cricket HAD a rich literary vein.

From a piece in the Millions...

The literary history of cricket, in turn, is a lesson in colonialism and post-colonialism. Cricket enthusiasts began building the sport’s narrative in the Victorian era—they wanted it to represent the idea of a near-fictional England, with an emphasis on the rural and the ancient, a construction that they exported to the farthest reaches of the British Empire. The sport was—and still is—imbued with a deep sense of morality. In 1909, Ford Madox Ford wrote, “‘playing cricket’ is synonymous with pursuing honourable courses.” “Not cricket” was code for unsportsmanlike and ungracious conduct; abroad, the same phrase evoked a sense of disorder that the colonizing British felt the need to conquer and set right, however misguided (and extraordinarily harmful) those impulses may have been. As cricket circumnavigated the globe, its narrative began to splinter and grow in different ways, but the idea of cricket as a gentlemen’s game remained. By the mid-twentieth century, cricket was being used as a metaphor and an argument for self-rule in the colonies. Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. James’s Beyond the Boundary, equal parts memoir and treatise, is politics by cricket—and considered one of the greatest sports books of all time. 

In the twenty-first century, these legacies remain.