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In this love letter to his father, former professional golfer Nathaniel Crosby shares memories of Bing Crosby on the golf course and the lessons he taught him about the game and about life. With a foreword by Jack Nicklaus.

In Mad Ducks and Bears, George Plimpton's engaging companion to Paper Lion, Plimpton focuses on two of the most entertaining and roguish linemen and former teammates: Alex Karras ("Mad Ducks") and John Gordy ("Bears"), both of whom went on to achieve brilliant post-football success. A more reflective, less madcap audiobook than Plimpton's other work, Mad Ducks and Bears is no less truthful and searching.

George Plimpton was perhaps best known for Paper Lion, the book that set the bar for participatory sports journalism. With his characteristic wit, Plimpton recounts his experiences in talking his way into training camp with the Detroit Lions, practicing with the team, and taking snaps behind center. His breezy style captures the pressures and tensions rookies confront, the hijinks that pervade when 60 high-strung guys live together in close quarters, and a host of football rites and rituals.

Hunting squirrels on an autumn morning, probing the woods, rifle in hand, Jackson reveals an attention to nature too often neglected. Following a bird dog into the damp and mysterious places where woodcock settle on their southbound migrations; chasing hounds on the trail of raccoons on a frosty winter night; stalking deer in a quiet corner of a small farm; fishing for carp in a creek, bass and bluegill in ponds, catfish in a murky river, and reef fish in the Gulf, Jackson reminds that we are stewards of not only resources but also a past that defines us as hunters and fishers.

A New York Times best seller, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions. The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed.

Here is the story of a community - Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts - and a sporting event - the island's legendary Striped Bass & Bluefish Derby - that is rendered with the same depth, color, and emotional power of the best fiction. Among the characters we meet Dick Hathaway, a crotchety legend who once caught a bluefish from a helicopter and was ultimately banned for cheating; and Janet Messineo, a recovering alcoholic who says that striped bass saved her life.

On January 1, 1966, New York came to a standstill as the city's transit workers went on strike. This was the first day on the job for Mayor John Lindsay - a handsome, young former congressman with presidential aspirations - and he would approach the issue with an unconventional outlook that would be his hallmark. Against this backdrop, too, the sporting scene saw tremendous upheaval.

Jalen Rose has never been quiet. Not as a kid growing up in Detroit in the '70s and '80s. Not as the brash, trash-talking leader of the legendary "Fab Five" at the University of Michigan. Not as the player under the stewardship of Hall of Famers Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, and others throughout his 13-year NBA career. And certainly not as a commentator and analyst on ABC/ESPN and Grantland.

Bill Littlefield (NPR's Only a Game) presents the second installment in the Library of America series devoted to classic American sportswriters, a definitive collector's edition of the pathbreaking writer who invented the long-form sports story.

Originally published in 1976, James A. Michener's explosive, spectacular Sports in America is a prescient examination of the crisis in American sports that is still unfolding to this day. With his lifelong enthusiasm for sports in evidence, the incomparable Michener tackles this subject thoroughly and leaves us amazed and appalled by what we've learned yet still loving the games we grew up on.

Dan Jenkins virtually invented the golf novel with Dead Solid Perfect, his rollicking account of the life and times of touring pro Kenny Lee Puckett. For the first time ever, Dan Jenkins’ best Golf Digest pieces have been collected together with over 20 all-new essays for the next generation of golfers. Often biting, usually cranky, always hilarious and surprising, this is Dan Jenkins at his best.

In Against Football Steve Almond details why, after 40 years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions: Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia? What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood--run, leap, throw, tackle--into a billion-dollar industry?

Originally published in 1994, this book was a fly-fishing phenomenon in the way Howell Raines' Fly Fishing Through the Mid-Life Crisis was. Taking his fishing hobby to near metaphysical levels, Ted Leeson tells about his passions: rivers, trout, and fly fishing. With wry humor and rare insight, he explores questions that engage most fishermen: What is it about rivers that draws us so irresistibly, and why does fly fishing seem such an aptly suited response?

For 14 years during the golden age of sports, Paul Gallico was one of America's ace sportswriters. He saw them all - the stars and the hams, the immortals and the phonies in boxing, wrestling, baseball, football, golf, tennis, and every other field of muscular endeavor in which men and women try to break hearts and necks for cash or glory. Then in 1937, at the height of his game (and the height of the payroll), Gallico suddenly and famously called it quits and left the New York Daily News.

Twenty-five celebrated writers share the inspiring words and timeless wisdom of the athletic coaches who changed and influenced their lives and pass on the sage advice they received.

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.

John Schulian, a much-honored sportswriter for nearly forty years, takes us back to a time when our greatest athletes stood before us as human beings, not remote gods. In this compelling collection, Schulian paints prose portraits to remind fans of what today's cloistered stars won't share with them. The result is an audiobook guaranteed to stir memories for the generation that was - and to leave subsequent generations wishing they had it so good.

This collection marks the return to print of John Lardner, one of America's press box giants, a classic stylist whose wry humor and tireless reporting helped elevate sportswriting to art. The brilliant W. C. Heinz called Lardner "the best of us." This book shows why. Lardner applied his singular touch not only to his era's icons - Joe Louis, Ted Williams, Satchel Paige - but to the scamps, eccentrics, hustlers, and con men in the shadow of sports.

From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.

When Richard “Frosty” Hesson was first approached by a young Jay Moriarty in 1990, the skinny kid with a sparkle in his eye only wanted one thing from the icon: His help in becoming a better surfer. Hesson, one of the first to conquer the huge waves off northern California known as Mavericks, recognized that the kid “had a vision.” Jay quickly demonstrated a resolve that reminded Frosty of his younger self, pursuing his goal with a seriousness far beyond his years. His attitude and work ethic earned Frosty’s respect and, eventually, his friendship.