Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time

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In the early 1900s editor Maxwell Perkins told anyone who would listen that Chicago sports columnist Ring Lardner was the most talented writer he knew, high praise given that Perkins’ stable included Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. It shouldn’t have come as a shock, though. Many of the country’s best writers have long been fascinated with sports, and that passion shows up in their prose. After all, when done right, sportswriting transcends bats and balls to display all the traits of great literature: incision, wit, force and vision, suffused with style and substance. Herewith the editors of Sports Illustrated’s favorite sports books, compiled with love and reason, out of intense and sometimes unruly discussions.

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  1. 1.
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    The Sweet Science
    by A. J. Liebling

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  2. 2.
    The Boys of Summer
    by Roger Kahn

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  3. 3.
    Ball Four
    by Jim Bouton

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  4. 4.
    Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream
    by H. G. Bissinger

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  5. 5.
    YOU KNOW ME AL
    by Ring Lardner

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  6. 6.
    Season on the Brink
    by John Feinstein

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  7. 7.
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    SEMI-TOUGH
    by Jenkins

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  8. 8.
    Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback
    by George Plimpton

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  9. 9.
    The Game
    by Ken Dryden

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  10. 10.
    Fever Pitch
    by Nick Hornby

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  11. 12.
    Seabiscuit: An American Legend
    by LAURA HILLENBRAND

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  12. 14.
    Bang the Drum Slowly
    by Mark Harris

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  13. 15.
    Heaven Is a Playground
    by Rick Telander

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  14. 16.
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    Levels of the Game
    by John McPhee

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  15. 17.
    Breaks of the Game
    by David Halberstam

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  16. 18.
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    The Summer Game (Unabridged)
    by Roger Angell

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  17. 19.
    The Long Season
    by Jim Brosnan

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  18. 20.
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    Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer
    by Jerry Kramer

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  19. 21.
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    Everybody's All-American
    by Frank Deford

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  20. 22.
    Fat City (California Fiction)
    by Leonard Gardner

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  21. 23.

  22. 24.
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    Natural
    by Bernard Malamud

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  23. 25.
    North Dallas Forty
    by Peter Gent

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  24. 26.
    When Pride Still Mattered : A Life Of Vince Lombardi
    by David Maraniss

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  25. 27.
    Babe: The Legend Comes to Life
    by Robert Creamer

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  26. 28.
    The Golf Omnibus
    by P.G. Wodehouse

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  27. 29.
    About Three Bricks Shy...And the Load Filled Up
    by Jr Roy Blount

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  28. 30.
    A Fan's Notes
    by Frederick Exley

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  29. 31.
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    Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life
    by Richard Ben Cramer

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  30. 32.
    The Game They Played
    by Stanley Cohen

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  31. 33.
    Veeck--As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck
    by Bill Veeck

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  32. 34.
    Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf
    by Ben Hogan

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  33. 35.
    The Worst Journey in the World
    by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

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  34. 36.
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    Beyond a boundary
    by C. L. R James

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  35. 37.
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    A false spring
    by Pat Jordan

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  36. 38.
    Life on the Run
    by Bill Bradley

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  37. 39.
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    The Red Smith reader
    by Red Smith

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  38. 40.
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    An Outside Chance: Classic and New Essays on Sport
    by Thomas McGuane

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  39. 41.
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    The unforgettable season (Fireside sports classic)
    by Gordon H Fleming

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  40. 42.
    The Celebrant
    by Eric Rolfe Greenberg

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  41. 43.
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  42. 44.
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    Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
    by Bill James

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  43. 45.
    End Zone
    by Don DeLillo

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  44. 46.
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    Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story
    by David Wolf

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  45. 47.
    Shoeless Joe
    by W. P. Kinsella

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  46. 48.

  47. 49.
    Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series
    by Eliot Asinof

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  48. 50.

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Created by Robot Co-op on Nov 30, 2005.
 

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