Sports Essays

This riveting collection of adventure writing includes the work of The Perfect Storm author, Sebastian Junger. Listen as men and women battle the elements, and often each other, to stay alive, confronting sharks, savage storms, rogue waves, mountainous icebergs, starvation, and their own fear and suffering.

John Gierach demonstrates once again that fishing, when done right, is as much a philosophical pursuit as a sport. Gierach travels to Wyoming and Maine and points in between, searching out new fly-fishing adventures and savoring familiar waters with old friends. Along the way he meditates on the importance of good guides, the challenge of salmon fishing, and the zen of fishing alone. On a more serious note, he ponders the damaging effects of disasters both natural and man-made.

Meet the Jolly Boys - five men from northern Wisconsin who built a deer hunting shack in 1955 and established a tradition that has now lasted over six decades. Hunting Camp 52, affectionately known as Blue Heaven, is a place where every trail, rock, and ravine has its own nickname; every kill is recorded by hand on a window shade; every hunter happily croons along during evening songfests; and every rowdy poker game lasts late into the night.

Unabridged selections from George Mallory's collected writings on his mountaineering - and his motivations. Famously impelled to climb Mount Everest simply because it was there, Mallory made three attempts to be the first to reach its summit, and perished on the third. His writing reveals the emotional life of the mountaineer. With eloquence, Mallory captures the struggles and the rewards involved, the climber's sense of triumph, and experiences of staggering beauty.

ESPN's star comedic duo, Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg, bring their radio and TV sports shtick to the listener in this hilarious audiobook, which includes their definitive list of rules to live by. This is for all ESPN devotees, all Mike and Mike fans, and fans of audiobooks like Dennis Miller's Rants and Tony Kornheiser's As Bald as I Want to Be.

In This Book Has Balls, Rapaport uses his signature smack-talk style and in-your-face humor to discuss everything from why LeBron will never be like Mike to how Tiger needs the ladies to get his golf game back and how he once thought Mary Lou Retton was his true love. And, of course, why next year will be the year the New York Knicks win the championship. This book is a series of rants - some controversial, some affectionate, but all incredibly hilarious.

"Epic" is a mountaineering term that evokes a sense of treacherous disaster. The climb that went wrong: fighting blinding snowstorms and horrific avalanches; days spent tentbound running low on food, water, and oxygen; surviving broken bones and shattered spirits. This program offers a collection of the most memorable accounts of legend-making expeditions to the world's most famous peaks, often in the worst possible conditions.

In the last two decades, innovation, data analysis, and technology have driven a tectonic shift in the sports business. Game of Edges is the story of how sports franchises evolved, on and off the field, from raggedly run small businesses into some of the most systematically productive companies around.

New York Times reporter John Branch's riveting, humane pieces about ordinary people doing extraordinary things at the edges of the sporting world have won nearly every major journalism prize. Sidecountry gathers the best of Branch's work, featuring 20 of his favorites from the more than 2,000 pieces he has published in the paper.

From French rugby's origins in Le Havre, (as an English export in the late nineteenth century), to the Catalan coast, acclaimed rugby writer Peter Bills travels the length and breadth of this vast country, visiting not only the big cities but those regional heartlands of the game such as Toulouse, Bordeaux and Clermont, as well as clubs in the Basque country, to reveal a country whose deep love of rugby has created a culture and playing style like no other.

From Mike Pesca, host of the popular Slate podcast The Gist, comes the greatest sports minds imagining how the world would change if a play, trade, injury, or referee's call had just gone the other way. Upon Further Review takes classic arguments conducted over pints in a pub and places them in the hands of writers, athletes, and historians. From turning points that every sports fan rues or celebrates to the forgotten would-be inflection points that defined sports, it answers age-old questions, and settles the score, even if the score bounced off the crossbar.

Most people associate storms and other big weather with death - with the kind of force that makes each of us wonder about life, time, and the nature of our surroundings. Some people go out looking for bad weather or go to places where they're likely to encounter it. Others have the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, the stories in Storm have more to say than that.

In All Fishermen Are Liars, Gierach travels around North America seeking out quintessential fishing experiences, whether it's at a busy stream or a secluded lake hidden amid snow-capped mountains. He talks about the art of fly-tying and the quest for the perfect steelhead fly ("The Nuclear Option"), about fishing in the Presidential Pools previously fished by the elder George Bush, and the importance of traveling with like-minded companions when caught in a soaking rain.

Ever since he joined the sports department of the Boston Globe in 1968, sports enthusiasts have been blessed with the writing and reporting of Bob Ryan. Tony Kornheiser calls him the "quintessential American sportswriter". For the past 25 years, he has also been a regular on various ESPN shows, especially The Sports Reporters, spreading his knowledge and enthusiasm for sports of all kinds.

Who knows a golfer best? Who’s with them every minute of every round, hears their muttering, knows whether they cheat? Their caddies, of course. So, sportswriter Rick Reilly figured that he could learn a lot about the players and their games by caddying, even though he had absolutely no idea how to do it. Amazingly, some of the best golfers in the world - including Jack Nicklaus, David Duval, Tom Lehman, John Daly, Casey Martin, and Jill McGill - agreed to let Reilly carry their bags at actual PGA and LPGA Tour events.

Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in America. Easy to learn, but impossible to master, it’s no wonder that nearly 5 million people nationwide have picked up their paddles and taken to the court. But people aren’t just dabbling in this up-and-coming activity, they are obsessed; some hit the court as many as five, six, even seven times a week. As Vanity Fair put it, pickleball has “won over everyone, from Leonardo DiCaprio to your grandparents.”

What does it take to win a major championship and reach the absolute pinnacle of golf? Through a season of the four tournaments - the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship - known collectively as the majors, John Feinstein takes us where the television cameras never go, both off the links and "inside the ropes", as he reveals the special challenges and rituals, the frustrations and exhilaration, that mark the lives and careers of the world's greatest golfers.

The goals of the budo - the martial arts and ways of Japan - lie in refining the body and spirit. These goals are not always the obvious ones - and are learned only through the guidance and direction of great teachers. The techniques, methods, and rituals of the sensei can serve as guides to a well-lived life - and provide invaluable lessons for today's martial artists.

Golf has been the subject of many books and the province of many experts, but few have written as sympathetically, or as knowingly, about the peculiar charms of bad golf, and the satisfactions of an essentially losing struggle. John Updike has been writing about golf since he took the game up at the age of 25. In the nearly 40 years of pleasurable bafflement that have followed, he has composed essays for Golf Digest and short stories for The New Yorker concerning the sport.

There are just a handful of people that have been ever present for the thirty years of the Premier League, but only one person has been at the very epicentre for the entire period: Geoff Shreeves. Packed full of hilarious stories on and off the pitch—including trying to teach Sir Michael Caine how to act, a frightening encounter with Mike Tyson, as well as getting a lift home from the World Cup with Mick Jagger—Cheers Geoff is a must-listen for any fan of the beautiful game.