Lapchick by Gus Alfieri
Gus Alfieri has written a book that pays homage to Joe Lapchick, a great man in the world of basketball. Joe Lapchick grew up with basketball when the game itself was growing up in the early 1900’s. Readers learn about Dr. Naismith, the fellow who developed the game for boys who could not afford the equipment of other sports. In the beginning, the basket was actually a peach basket hung at 10 ft. It wasn't until 1912 that the baskets were opened. Alfieri tells all about the early years of the new game with many interesting facts including many of it’s characters. Joe Lapchick was one of the early players when players played for many teams sometimes playing more than one game a day. Lapchick became one of the original Celtics and coached the NY Knicks and the St. John’s University basketball team. He helped to integrate the NBA and was known as a kind and decent man who loved basketball and whose players loved him.
Rosalie Toja, Brentwood Public Library
Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life by James Blake
Breaking Back chronicles the meteoric rise of a regular-kind-of guy from Fairfield, Connecticut, who plays a mean game of tennis. As a child James Blake battled a severe case of scoliosis, so the fact that he could play tennis at all was something of a miracle. But scoliosis was only the first in a series of obstacles that would challenge Blake even more seriously later in life.
Blake fractures his neck during a routine practice rally and it puts his career on hold—it may even end his career completely. Breaking Back is an introspective memoir that describes how James Blake formulates a personal philosophy that helps him through incredible difficulties: a serious injury; the loss of his father; a bout with shingles; and a virus-induced paralysis.
Written in the first person and in an easy-to-read style, Breaking Back outlines Blake’s sources of inspiration and anxiety, as well as the personal life lessons that help him through his trials.
This memoir is an inspirational, uplifting read that may serve as an inspiration to aspiring athletes or to anyone who may be facing difficult times. James Blake is a living example of what perseverance and a one-step-at-time approach can accomplish.
Other memoirs about tennis players include Days of Grace by Arthur Ashe and Venus and Serena by Venus and Serena Williams. Stories with a theme of overcoming adversity in the world of sports would include It’s Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong and Landing It by Scott Hamilton.
Deborah Formosa, Northport-East Northport Library
Messier: Hockey’s Dragon Slayer by Rick Carpiniello
Simply a book of quotes and stories from Mark Messier’s admiration society. Not a biography of Messier, but more a collection of snapshots of his career with Edmonton, his first stint with the Rangers, and with Vancouver. The book includes praise and accolades from other players, coaches, and anyone else in the hockey field. The writer does not delve into Messier, the man. He doesn’t even dig; he doesn’t even spade. We just have to take him at his word that Messier is an all-around good guy. The book is strictly about Messier, the hockey player.
Any reader who has followed Messier’s career will not find new discoveries. But, if you’re looking for past plays, scores, goals, passes, etc. during specific, important games, this is the book for you.
Lori Ludlow, Babylon Public Library
Fanatic: 10 Things All Sports Fans Should Do Before They Die by Jim Gorant
Sports Illustrated writer, Jim Gorant, chose the ten sporting events he felt were the most iconic and spent just over a year of his life attending them all. Who goes to these events and why? Each draws their audiences for different reasons. Why do people become fanatics? Is this a good thing? Gorant has a gift for description and he sees the humor in everything. Fanatic is a combination of a travelogue and an examination of human nature. It also is a great vehicle for discussion; not many people will agree with his top ten choices.
Karen Jaffe, Comsewogue Public Library
All Fishermen are Liars by Linda Greenlaw
It may be a stretch to include this book by and about commercial fishermen in the sports genre, but the author, Linda Greenlaw, has so much fun with the subject of fishing and the tall tales that accompany fishermen everywhere, it seemed a sure bet to be included in a conversation about sports. All Fishermen are Liars takes place at the Dry Dock Bar in Portland, Maine, where Ms. Greenlaw ponders how to converse with her bet friend and lunch partner, Alden Leeman, about his health and his need to retire from the fishing business. Interspersed with Ms. Greenlaw’s thoughts and memories are a series of stories recalled by friends and fishermen who wander in and out of the bar over the course of a long afternoon and evening. Some of the stories are near fantastic in their white-knuckled intensity and drama, but there is at least a kernel of truth contained in each one. Ms. Greenlaw says, “all the stories I assume really happened.” Included among the stories is one tragic tale of a party boat that sank in a storm off the coast of Montauk in the early 1950’s. The stories are suspenseful and written in a confident, conversational style.
Audience: men and women, fishermen, sailors, lovers of the Maine coast, fans of short nonfiction and adventure stories.
Read-Alikes:
The Lobster Chronicles; The Hungry Ocean; and Slipknot by Linda Greenlaw.
The Sea’s Bitter Harvest: Thirteen Deadlly Days on the North Atlantic by Douglas A. Campbell
Lobster Gangs of Maine by James M. Acheson
Working on the Edge: Surviving in the World’s Most Dangerous Profession:
King Crab Fishing on Alaska’s High Seas by Spike Walker
Kathleen L. Scheibel, Brookhaven Free Library
Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family and Fighting to Get Back on the Board by Bethany Hamilton
Bethany considered herself a normal girl with a passion for surfing and her church. On Halloween morning, she went to the local beach to surf with friends and although the waves weren’t great, she was enjoying herself - that is, until a fourteen-foot tiger shark decided to attack. Bethany loses her left arm in the attack and wonders whether she’ll ever become the professional surfer she’s been training her whole life to be.
Thirteen-year-old Bethany tells her story with honesty and candidness; however, she speaks of her faith and God throughout the book almost to the point of exhaustion occasionally making the reader feel like they’re getting a bible lesson as opposed to reading a biography. The book is marketed as young adult with short chapters, easy-to-read text and pictures of Bethany and her family both pre and post attack. Anyone looking for an inspirational story will most likely enjoy this biography and how Bethany decided not to let one freak accident ruin the life she had barely begun.
Read-Alikes:
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read
Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston
Up and Running: The Jami Goldman Story by Jami Goldman
Azuree Agnello, West Babylon Public Library
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
Award-winning memoir of a young man’s obsession with English football and its impact on his life. When Nick Hornby was eleven, his parents separated, leaving him in the company of his mother and his sister. Football was the only activity that his father suggested that was even remotely interesting to him. Through the years his love of Arsenal, a football team with an inconsistent playing record, opened the doors to friendships with other boys as well as giving father and son something to share and discuss. In 2005 Fever Pitch was made into a movie with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon , but the sport was changed to baseball and the team to the Boston Red Sox. A 1997 British movie by the same name starring Colin Firth kept the original sport and the team name.
Read-Alikes
Wait Until Next Year by Doris Kearns
The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer
Kathleen Carter, Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library
Yukon Wild: The Adventures of Four Women Who Paddled 2,000 Miles Through America's Last Frontier by Beth Johnson
In the summer of 1981, Beth Johnson decided she wanted to paddle the Yukon, a 2,000 mile river which spans the continent of Alaska. A year later she, three other women and three canoes began a summer trek down the fifth longest river in North America. This book is the story of their year-long preparations and a day-by-day account of their journey through the Alaskan wilderness. Along with being an exciting adventure tale, it is an interesting and important report for anyone wanting to meet their next challenge in the great outdoors.
Read-Alikes
Moving Waters; Adventures on Northern Rivers by Sam Cook
Adventure Kayaking: Inland Waters of the Western United States by Don Skillman
Return by Water; Surf Stories and Adventures by Kimball Taylor
Rhea Pollock, Brentwood Public Library
Iditarod Dreams by DeeDee Jonrowe
The Iditarod is an Alaskan dogsled race that lasts more than 10 days and covers 1150 miles. DeeDee Jonrowe describes her year preparing for the race and what a sledder’s life is like. Jonrowe and her coauthor cover pup raising, dog training, and the 1993 and 1994 Iditarod races and the politics behind them. There is also mention of the Alpinrod race in Europe.
The writing is choppy and somewhat pedestrian and does not capture the spirit of adventure and danger and beauty of the National Historic Trail where the race takes place.
Read-alikes might include other personal accounts of the Iditarod: Father of the Iditarod: The Joe Redington Story by Lew Freedman, and No End in Sight: My Life as a Blind Iditarod Racer by Rachael Scdoris and Rick Steber. Accounts of other extreme races like the Tour de France, French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France by Tim Moore, might also be of interest.
Michelle Epstein, East Northport Library
October Men: Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin and the Yankees’ Miraculous Finish in 1978
by Roger Kahn
The 1978 season was a turning point for a team that had been struggling with cohesiveness. Renowned sportswriter Roger Kahn captures what went on behind the scenes of New York Yankees one-game playoff against the Boston Red Sox. With great detail, Kahn lets us in on the conflicts fans rarely see: battling egos, alcohol abuse, and racism to name a few. Fueled by this turmoil, the determined Yankees pulled it together and played one of the greatest games in baseball history.
Similar titles:
The Bronx Zoo: The Astonishing Inside Story of the 1978 World Champion
New York Yankees by Sparky Lyle
The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of '78
by Richard Bradley
The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
Catherine Nashak, Deer Park Public Library
Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936 by David Clay Large
The author is a professor of history at Montana State, and has published several books in his specialty, modern German history. In this work his focus is the Third Reich’s use of the Olympic games as a blockbuster propaganda vehicle: Hitler recognized the opportunity and used it to maximum effect to show the world the strength of his young Nazi state, German athleticism, and, he hoped, Aryan cultural supremacy. He spent huge amounts of money on Berlin’s infrastructure, on refurbishing the sports complex, and on state-subsidized athletic training. World opinion was, largely, gratifying, a boost to the Nazi regime. Another important theme is the proposed international boycott, ultimately derailed by the American Olympic Committee headed by Avery Brundage. This has relevance for our present time as many in the world‘s human right’s community are arguing against participation in the 2008 Beijing Summer Games.
Readers will appreciate the author’s writing style, his breadth of research, and his scholarship. Nazi Games is well worth the reading.
Suzanne McGuire, Commack Public Library
Two Ton: One fight, one night Tony Galento v. Joe Louis by Joseph Monninger
My father was an avid boxing fan and one of the boxers he spoke of with great enthusiasm was Tony Galento, better known as “Two Ton Tony”. Kirkus Reviews synopsizes the story: “A championship match-up between Italian-American boxer Tony Galento and legend Joe Louis is the focus here, but also the lens through which this brisk and entertaining history looks at the state of the nation in the 1930’s” The chapters alternate between the retelling of the great fight in which an unlikely opponent standing 5’ 8” almost as wide as he was tall, put Louis first into the ropes and then onto the canvas and the stories of each of these great pugilists and the times in which they lived. The era was the Great Depression when immigrants and their descendents to earn some money tried their fists in the ring. There were boxers like Louis who had natural born talent and trained religiously and there were those who fought with ox-like strength and ferocity and very little technique. Tony Galento was in the latter category who, from years of delivering ice up the stairs of the New York City tenements hence the moniker “Two Ton,” had the strength of Atlas and a deadly left hook. Unfortunately, when he finally got his shot at the heavyweight title against reigning champion Joe Louis, Tony was past his prime, overweight, out of shape but was a game opponent and had box office appeal. There’s a Seabiscuit spirit to this narrative in which the fans root for the underdog who gives them hope in the dark days of the Depression.
It is an amusing, jolting, bittersweet tale of a clownish boxer “Two Ton,” who was beloved by his fans, the Ali of his day, who instead of “Stinging like a bee,” was quoted before each of his bouts “I’ll moida da bum.” Through Monninger’s brutal imagery his story also delivers a cautionary tale of the deadliness of the sport of boxing. A great read.
Read-Alikes:
A Flame of Poor Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring Twenties by Roger Kahn
Raging Bull by Jake LaMotta and Joseph Carter
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
Somebody Down Here Likes Me, Too by Rocky Graziano and Ralph Corsel
Peggy McCarthy, Smithtown Public Library
Mostly True: A Memoir of Food, Family and Baseball by Molly O’Neill
. For Molly, her family was brought and stayed together through food and baseball. Molly’s family history is infused with baseball’s history. Her great grandfather played on one of the first organized baseball traveling teams, her grandfather played barnstorming ball and her father played in the minor leagues. Molly’s father eventually marries the tallest woman in Columbus, Ohio, with the hope of spawning baseball players. He achieves his goal. All of Molly’s brothers play baseball throughout their childhood, although it seems her youngest brother, Yankee baseball player Paul O’Neill, was never pushed as hard by his father to be “The Greatest.” Molly’s story takes us full circle, beginning with cooking for her brothers in her mother’s kitchen, through the baseball trials and triumphs of her brothers and ultimately ending in almost the same fashion in which it began, in the kitchen.
Pamela Wells, Lindenhurst Public Library
Being Sugar Ray: The life of Sugar Ray Robinson, Americas greatest boxer and the first celebrity athlete
by Kenneth Shropshire
A biography usually begins at birth and proceeds to the final resting place. This biography digresses and while noting the important dates in the life of the subject, it interweaves sportspeople of a later date and of a different climate showing the money discrepancy and a totally different acceptance factor. Robinson’s combination of talent, charisma and style enabled him to attain an iconic status unrealized by previous sports superstars. This combination provided Robinson with a position at the time that would pave the way for future “superstars.” From poverty through one of the few avenues of escape available—boxing-- he parlayed his talent, flair in dress, his businesses in the Harlem community and a winning smile – his “cool” - into celebrity. Students looking for information regarding blacks in sports and their rise in numbers and acceptance will find a wealth of details in this book.
Read-Alikes:
Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy (the first black coach to win a Super Bowl) with Nathan Whitaker
Opening Day: The story of Jackie Robinson’s first season by Jonathan Eig
The Greatest: My own story by Muhammad Ali with Richard Durham
Marie T. Horney, Cold Spring Harbor Library
Ty and the Babe: Baseball’s Fiercest Rivals: A Surprising Friendship and the 1941 Has-Beens Golf Championship
by Tom Stanton.
This is a story of the tumultuous relationship between Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth which spanned the early decades of the twentieth century to 1941 when they faced-off for a series of charity golf matches. Cobb and Ruth were emblematic of the Golden Era of our national pastime from the deadball days which Cobb dominated to the lively ball or home-run years of Ruth.
In addition to the history and evolution of the sport of baseball and the rowdy personalities of these two icons, the reader will find vivid details of the times in the boisterous and tumultuous cities of New York, Boston and Detroit.
Audience: All ages, male and female.
Read-Alikes:
The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs by Bill Jenkinson
Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball by Norman Macht
Deadball Stars of the American League, David Jones, Editor
Deadball Stars of the National League by Tom Simon
Snow in August by Pete Hamill
Grace O’Connor, West Islip Public Library
Pyle’s Amazing Foot Race by Geoff Williams
The decade of the 1920s in America was the age of endurance fads. From dance marathons to flagpole sitting contests, America was obsessed with the idea of who could perform an activity faster, longer, and more creatively than the next guy. Enter one C.C. Pyle, who conceived the idea of a cross-country foot race from Los Angeles to New York. First prize would be $25,000 to the man who could run the equivalent of 30 to 50 miles a day for over two months straight. Labeled the Bunion Derby by detractors in the press, 275 contestants, who had each paid $125 for the chance to win the grand prize started the race on March 4, 1928, and quickly found that the contest was not as well planned out as they had expected.
In an era before good running shoes and sports nutrition, the catalog of horrors the runners had to endure boggles the mind – broken legs and other destroyed body parts, searing heat and dust and storms, inadequate food and sleeping conditions, and many dangerous encounters with cars. Author Geoff Williams tells a colorful tale of a cross-country road trip, a large part of it on the old Route 66, focusing on the personalities and motivations of some of the more interesting personalities in the pack. Williams is able keep the story upbeat even as the toll of mishaps mounts, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to see this story as a future movie.
In spite of the suffering he inflicted on his runners, the colorful C.C. Pyle comes across as less a con man than a man with lax accounting standards. He just never seemed to remember that he had to pay back all the money he had borrowed or that running 50 miles a day could take a toll on your health.
On May 26, 1928, 50 runners managed to make it to New York City, where they had to run an additional 20 miles around the track at Madison Square Garden, before they could receive their due.
Read-Alike authors could include:
Mike Lupica, Bump and Run and Full Court Press
Rick Reilly, Missing Links and Shanks for Nothing
Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar series
Bill Crider, Winning Can Be Murder
Bruce Silverstein, Patchogue-Medford Library
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