Holiday book gift guide: Sports

Big Book of Sports Quotes

Compiled by Eric Zweig and Chris McDonell

Firefly, $29.95

Here’s one of the 1,000 here, from (who else?) Yogi Berra: “So I’m ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.”

The Book of Basketball

The NBA According to the Sports Guy

Bill Simmons

ESPN Books/Ballantine, $18 paper

ESPN.com’s “the Sports Guy” offers his irreverent take on NBA history while also commenting on the league’s best.

Carry the Rock

Race, Football, and the Soul of an American City

Jay Jennings

Rodale, $25.99

A portrait of race relations in the South half a century after the Little Rock Nine and the integration of Central High School, seen through the prism of that school’s football team.

Fifty-Nine in ’84

Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had

Edward Achorn

Smithsonian/Harper Collins, $25.99

In 1884, Old Hoss Radbourn won 59 games for the Providence Grays, a record that has never come close to being broken. A detailed look at a bygone era in baseball.

The Games That Changed the Game

The Evolution of the NFL in Seven Sundays

Ron Jaworski with Greg Cosell and David Plaut

ESPN Books/Ballantine, $26

Jaworski, a former NFL MVP and now an ESPN analyst, looks at the evolution of the game through seven key games and the coaching decisions that changed NFL strategy.

The Gipper

George Gipp, Knute Rockne and the Dramatic Rise of Notre Dame Football

Jack Cavanaugh

Skyhorse, $24.95

Eight decades after his death, they’re still talking about the school’s first football star and his enduring legacy on Notre Dame’s rise to national prominence.

How Lucky You Can Be

The Story of Coach Don Meyer

Buster Olney

ESPN Books/Ballantine, $25

After being seriously injured in a car accident and then learning he had terminal cancer, Northern State University men’s basketball coach Don Meyer mined a deep pool of spiritual resolve to transform his workaholic life. Olney, a senior writer at ESPN the Magazine, has written more than a mere sports memoir here.

Jerry West

The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon

Roland Lazenby

ESPN, $28

A first-rate piece of narrative nonfiction on one of the most complicated and compelling stars in American sports during the last half-century.

Joe Louis

Hard Times Man

Randy Roberts

Yale University Press, $27.50

The first full biography in a generation of the heavyweight boxing legend who defended his title 25 times and was once the most famous man in the world.

Laker Girl

Jeanie Buss with Steve Springer

Triumph, $24.95

Dr. Buss’ daughter, and Coach Phil Jackson’s girlfriend, details her rise to the top in the purple-and-gold empire.

The Last Boy

Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood

Jane Leavy

Harper, $27.99

He was one of the greatest players in baseball history and the Great White Hope to many fans during the early years of the sport’s integration. He also was a womanizer and alcoholic. Leavy does a masterful job in weaving the many threads of Mantle’s life.

The Last Hero

A Life of Henry Aaron

Howard Bryant

Pantheon, $29.95

A full-throated biography of the vastly gifted but underappreciated Henry Aaron, the man who broke Babe Ruth’s career home-run mark.

Native American Son

The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe

Kate Buford

Alfred A. Knopf, $35

Voted the finest male athlete of the first half of the 20th century, Thorpe helped define professional football and helped to create what would become the National Football League. But he endured years of hardship when his Olympic medals were stripped from him after he played minor league baseball. A comprehensive telling of the life of a singular American athlete.

PacMan

Behind the Scenes with Manny Pacquaio, the Greatest Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World

Gary Andrew Poole

Da Capo, $25

The life story of Manny Pacquaio, who dominated the bigger boxer Antonio Margarito last month to win the WBC’s 154-pound title, the eighth weight class that he’s conquered.

Play Their Hearts Out

A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine

George Dohrmann

Ballantine, $26

Greed, blind ambition and the exploitation of kids. Welcome to the harsh realties of youth basketball as told by Dohrmann, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

Rise of a Dynasty

The ’57 Celtics, the First Banner, and the Dawning of a New America

Bill Reynolds

New American Library, $24.95

The seventh game of the 1957 NBA championship series between Boston and the then-St. Louis Hawks was a key moment in the history of the fabled Celtics.

The Silent Season of a Hero

The Sports Writing of Gay Talese

Edited by Michael Rosenwald

Walker & Co., $16 paper

A collection of lyrical sports pieces from Talese, a bastion of the New Journalism that changed the face of storytelling in America.

Steinbrenner

The Last Lion of Baseball

Bill Madden

Harper, $26.99

He bought the Yankees for $10 million in 1973 and the team is now worth more than $1 billion. The life and times of the most controversial owner in modern baseball history.

Underdawgs

How Brad Stevens and the Butler Bulldogs Marched Their Way to the Brink of College Basketball’s National Championship

David Woods

Scribner, $24

The book’s subtitle just about says it all, doesn’t it?

Willie Mays

The Life, the Legend

James S. Hirsch, authorized by Willie Mays

Scribner, $30

A transcendent figure in modern baseball, Mays was one of the first five-tool players, some say the greatest player to ever don a uniform. He made baseball look easy.

Zero Regrets

Be Greater Than Yesterday

Apolo Ohno with Alan Abrahamson

Atria, $26

Apolo Ohno is the most decorated American Winter Olympics athlete of all time. He explains how a rebellious child raised by a single father got there in this concise autobiography.