Early in 2004, two writers and Red Sox fans, Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, decided to chronicle the upcoming season, one of the most hotly anticipated in baseball history. They would sit together at Fenway. They would exchange emails. They would write about the games. And, as it happened, they would witness the greatest comeback ever in sports, and the first Red Sox championship in eighty-six years. What began as a Sox-filled summer like any other is now a fan's notes for the ages.

MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BASEBALL FANS KNOW, WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY, that umpires are simply overpaid galoots who are doing an easy job badly. Millions of American baseball fans are wrong.
"As They See 'Em "is an insider's look at the largely unknown world of professional umpires, the small group of men (and the very occasional woman) who make sure America's favorite pastime is conducted in a manner that is clean, crisp, and true. Bruce Weber, a "New York Times "reporter, not only interviewed dozens of professional umpires but entered their world, trained to become an umpire, then spent a season working games from Little League to big league spring training. "As They See 'Em "is Weber's entertaining account of this experience as well as a lively exploration of what amounts to an eccentric secret society, with its own customs, its own rituals, its own colorful vocabulary. Writing with deep knowledge of and affection for baseball, he delves into such questions as: Why isn't every strike created equal? Is the ump part of the game or outside of it? Why doesn't a tie go to the runner? And what do umps and managers say to each other during an argument, really?
Packed with fascinating reportage that reveals the game as never before and answers the kinds of questions that fans, exasperated by the cliches of conventional sports commentary, pose to themselves around the television set, Bruce Weber's "As They See 'Em "is a towering grand slam.

The long-awaited sequel to the bestselling classic memoir, A Handful of Summers. Gordon Forbes played for the South African Davis Cup team in the 50s and early 60s and returned to the circuit as a writer and observer. In 'Too Soon to Panic' he takes the readers behind the scenes at the big tournaments - Wimbledon, Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows; Germany, Spain and Italy - and introduces them to many of tennis's most extraordinary and dynamic characters, including Mark McCormack, Rod Laver, Jim Courier and Andre Agassi. Crammed with riotously funny anecdotes and vivid evocations of the innocence and camaraderie of the game in Forbes's day - when tennis as still a gentlemanly, amateur and often rather ramshackle affair - and insightful observations on today's glamorous game - where money reigns and sheer strength sometimes seems to conquer skill - Forbes explores the remarkable changes that have come over the sport in the last forty years.

When Vince Lombardi took the job of coaching the Green Bay Packers in 1959, he inherited a team that had gone from legendary to laughing stock. They hadn't fielded a winning team in over a decade and had gone 1-10-1 in the 1958 season despite having seven future Hall of Famers on the team. They were a team accustomed to losing and in desperate need of a turnaround. """That First Season" chronicles that turnaround at the hands of Lombardi, himself serving as a head coach for the first time. The Packers were a team of talented underachievers more used to lax coaching and late nights than grueling practices and curfews. Lombardi's no-bull coaching style helped hammer them into winners who operated with machine-like precision. Every football fan knows that the Packers under Lombardi were champions, but "That First Season" shows how he did it, bringing readers the inside story of a sports dynasty.

In 1984 the University of Washington Huskies won every game but one, ranking second in national polls. For most coaches, such a season would be a career pinnacle. But for Don James second place motivated him to set aside what he knew about football and rethink the game. James made radical changes to his coaching philosophy, from recruitment to becoming one of the first college teams willing to blitz on any down and in any situation. His new approach initially failed, yet it finally culminated in one of the most explosive teams in college football history. In Fear No Man, Mike Gastineau recounts the riveting story of Don James and the national championship team he built. Undefeated, the 1991 Huskies outscored opponents by an average of 31 points per game on their way to winning the Rose Bowl and a national championship. The team included twenty-five future NFL players, and in Gastineau's gripping account they come alive with all the swagger and joy they brought to the game. A brilliant examination of one of college football's greatest coaches and teams, Fear No Man is the inspirational story of an improbable journey that led to one classic and unforgettable season.

Cricket is a very old game in Scotland - far older than football, a sport which sometimes exercises a baleful, obsessive and deleterious effect on the national psyche. Cricket goes back at least as far as the Jacobite rebellions and their sometimes vicious aftermaths. It is often felt that Scottish cricket underplays itself. It has been portrayed as in some ways an English sport, a "softies" sport, and a sport that has a very limited interest among the general population of Scotland. This is emphatically not true, and this book is in part an attempt to prove that this is a misconception. Sixty-one games (it was going to be just 60, but one turned up at the last minute!) have been chosen from the past 250 years to show that cricket does indeed influence a substantial part of the nation. The matches have been selected at all levels, from Scotland against visiting Australian teams all the way down to a Fife school fixture. These naturally reflect the life, experience and geographical whereabouts of the author. The games are quirky sometimes, (and quirkily chosen) with an emphasis on important events in the broader history of this country, notably the imminence of wars and resumptions at the end of these conflicts. But the important thing is that every single cricket contest does mean an awful lot to some people.

The 1939 Arsenal side is firing on all cylinders and celebrating a string of victories. They appear unstoppable, but the Trojans - a side of amateurs who are on a winning streak of their own - may be about to silence the Gunners. Moments into the second half the whistle blows, but not for a goal or penalty. One of the Trojans has collapsed on the pitch. By the end of the day, he is dead. Gribble's unique mystery, featuring the actual Arsenal squad of 1939, sends Inspector Anthony Slade into the world of professional football to investigate a case of deadly foul play on and off the pitch.

A one-time Southampton policeman and BBC literary producer working with such writers as E.M. Forster, John Betjeman and Dylan Thomas, who became a close friend, John Arlott has always considered himself lucky. From his first ten-minute summaries of the 1946 Indian cricket tour until his retirement in 1980 he commentated on every Test match England ever played. This autobiography looks at his schooldays, about great cricketers he has known or watched and about his standing for the Liberals in the 1955 General Election.

There is no college ball more passionate and competitive than football in the Southeastern Conference, where seven of the twelve schools boast stadiums bigger than any in the NFL and 6.5 million fans hit the road every year to hoot and holler their teams to victory.

In September 2006, popular sports columnist and lifelong University of Tennessee fan Clay Travis set out on his "Dixieland Delight Tour." Without a single map, hotel reservation, or game ticket, he began an 8,000-mile journey through the beating heart of the Southland. As Travis toured the SEC, he immersed himself in the bizarre game-day rituals of the common fan, brazenly dancing with the chancellor's wife at a Vanderbilt frat party, hanging with University of Florida demigod quarterback Tim Tebow, and abandoning himself totally to the ribald intensity and religious fervor of SEC football. "Dixieland Delight" is Travis's hilarious, loving, irreverent, and endlessly entertaining chronicle of a season of ironic excess in a world that goes a little crazy on football Saturdays.