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. Whether in snappy columns or leisurely magazine pieces, Lardner held sport of every description up to the light, forever changing the way people wrote, read, and thought about their heroes, from superstars to scrappers. These forty-nine pieces represent sportswriting at the top of its game. Purchase the audio edition.

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. Here, Willie Mays remembers how to smile in dreaded retirement; Muhammad Ali muses about a world that was once his. For every moment of triumph-Joe Montana in the Super Bowl, Marvelous Marvin Hagler over Thomas Hearns-there is another filled with the heartache that Pete Maravich felt when he hung up his basketball shoes. The result is a book guaranteed to stir memories for the generation that was-and to leave subsequent generations wishing they had it so good. Purchase the audio edition.

Stanley Woodward (1895-1964) was a veteran sports writer, newspaperman, and sports editor of the "New York Herald Tribune"; indeed, some believe he was the greatest of all sports editors. "Paper Tiger" is his lively and vivid account of his life as an athlete, sailor, war correspondent, and metropolitan journalist. Whether discussing his war experiences, the world of sports, or the tough and exciting world of newspaper life, Woodward speaks with a rare directness. When he doesn't like something or someone, he makes no bones about it. Yet, despite all of his often acerbic comments, we always have the feeling that the author's honesty is matched by his fairness. Partisan he may be; vindictive and sour he is not. Although Paper Tiger will appeal especially to sports fans, anyone who wants to know the inside story of newspaper life will find it a fascinating book.

A report from the true heart of baseball, this anthology leaves behind the bad boys and big names of the major leagues to take readers to the places where the spirit of America's game resides. These are a veteran sportswriter's dispatches from the bush leagues and the sandlot, his tributes to the Negro leaguers, mining-town dreamers, and certifiable eccentrics who give baseball its heart and soul, laughter and tears. John Schulian, a long-time "Sports Illustrated" contributor and former "Chicago Sun-Times" sports columnist, puts together a portrait of a disappearing America--a place inhabited by star-crossed Negro Leagues slugger Josh Gibson; by a vagabond player still toiling for the Durham Bulls at thirty-six; by the coach who created the Eskimo Pie League for kids in a Utah copper-mining town. When he does venture into the big leagues, Schulian gives us the underdogs and the human touches, from Bill Veeck peg-legging toward retirement as the game's last maverick team owner, to musings on Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe at Christmas, to Studs Terkel's reflections on baseball. In the end, though, this collection belongs to the kid at a tryout camp, the washed-out semipro following the game on his car radio, the players who were the toasts of outposts from Roswell to Wisconsin Rapids--and to the readers who keep the spirit of the game alive.