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What: “Dan Patrick Outtakes”

Publisher: Hyperion

Price: $12.95

If you’re a regular reader of ESPN the Magazine, this book does not offer original material. The 28 outtakes in this 169-page paperback book were done by ESPN “SportsCenter” anchor Dan Patrick for the magazine.

But if you like Patrick’s wry humor, it doesn’t matter if you’ve read his stuff before. It can still bring a smile to your face.

The book has Patrick’s interviews with some of the biggest names in sports, from Mark McGwire and Mike Piazza to Brett Favre and Steve Young to Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon to Charles Barkley and Tim Duncan.

Pete Sampras says about Patrick in the book’s introduction: “Now, I’m not going to lie. Interviewing is not my favorite part of being a professional athlete. Week after week, year after year, it’s the same questions and the same stories. But I actually look forward to talking to Dan because he cuts below the surface. He’s interested in what’s beyond the outer layer. And he’s funny. . . . I do between 80 and 100 interviews a year, and believe me, if every interviewer had the talent and personality that Dan has, I’d be the most interesting man on the planet!”

Here’s an outtake from the Piazza outtake:

Patrick: “What is the best thing you ever learned from Tommy Lasorda?”

Piazza: “How to get a free meal. . . . Tommy has never paid.”

Piazza on dating actresses: “I don’t go with actresses. . . . I don’t go for big names. They’re too much trouble. . . . I can’t afford the Mariah Careys. That’s just too high profile.”

This from Young: “You take your beatings from the defensive linemen, but you get a small degree of it back by making them run. One of my favorite things is to run a while just ahead of whoever it might be. Just to make them run all that time.”