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100 Top Sports Books of All Time
Compiled by the staff of Sports Illustrated for their issue on December 16, 2002, as published at http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/features/2002/top_sports_books/1/.*

1. The Sweet Science (A. J. Liebling)
2. The Boys of Summer (Roger Kahn)
3. Ball Four (Jim Bouton)
4. Friday Night Lights (H. G. Bissinger)
5. You Know Me Al (Ring Lardner)
6. A Season on the Brink (John Feinstein)
7. Semi-Tough (Dan Jenkins)
8. Paper Lion (George Plimpton)
9. The Game (Ken Dryden)
10 Fever Pitch (Nick Hornby)
11 River Runs Through It (Norman Maclean)
12 Seabiscuit (Laura Hillenbrand)
13 Loose Balls (Terry Pluto)

14 Bang the Drum Slowly (Mark Harris)
15 Heaven Is a Playground (Rick Telander)
16 Levels of the Game (John McPhee)
17 The Breaks of the Game (David Halberstam)
18 The Summer Game (Roger Angell)
19 The Long Season (Jim Brosnan)
20 Instant Replay (Jerry Kramer)
21 Everybody's All-American (Frank Deford)
22 Fat City (Leonard Gardner)
23 The City Game (Pete Axthelm)
24 The Natural (Bernard Malamud)
25 North Dallas Forty (Peter Gent)
26 When Pride Still Mattered (David Maraniss)
27 Babe: The Legend Comes to Life (Robert Creamer)
28 The Golf Omnibus (P. G. Wodehouse)
29 About Three Bricks Shy of a Load (Jr Roy Blount)
30 A Fan's Notes (Frederick Exley)
31 Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Richard Ben Cramer)
32 The Game They Played (Stanley Cohen)
33 Veeck as in Wreck (Bill Veeck)
34 Ben Hogan's Five Lessons (Ben Hogan and Herbert Warren Wind)
35 The Worst Journey in the World (Apsley Cherry-Garrard)
36 Beyond a Boundary (C. L. R. James)
37 A False Spring (Pat Jordan)
38 Life on the Run (Bill Bradley)
39 The Red Smith Reader (Red Smith)
40 An Outside Chance: Essays on Sport (Thomas McGuane)
41 The Unforgettable Season (Gordon H. Fleming)
42 The Celebrant (Eric Rolfe Greenberg)
43 Big Red of Meadow Stable (William. Nack)
44 The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (Bill James)
45 End Zone (Don Delillo)
46 Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story (David Wolf)
47 Shoeless Joe (W. P. Kinsella)
48 Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer)
49 Eight Men Out (Eliot Asinof)
50 Baseball's Great Experiment (Jules Tygiel)
51 Laughing in the Hills (Bill Barich)
52 Dollar Sign on the Muscle (Kevin Kerrane)
53 The Bronx Zoo (Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock)
54 The Professional (W. C. Heinz)
55 The Baseball Encyclopedia (Macmillan Publishing)
56 A Savage Business (Richard Hoffer)
57 The Glory of Their Times (Lawrence S. Ritter)
58 The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball (John Thorn)
59 Among the Thugs (Bill Buford)
60 Lords of the Realm (John Helyar)
61 The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (Robert Coover)
62 Days of Grace (Arthur Ashe)
63 Out of Their League (Dave Meggyesy)
64 Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf (John Updike)
65 In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle (Madeleine Blais)
66 They Call Me Coach (John Wooden with Jack Tobin)
67 Cosell (Howard Cosell)
68 Down the Fairway (Bobby Jones and O.B. Keeler)
69 Big Game, Small World (Alexander Wolff)
70 The Last Shot (Darcy Frey)
71 Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Douglas Kent Hall)
72 Out of the bunker and into the trees (Rex Lardner)
73 The Fight (Norman Mailer)
74 Only the Ball Was White (Robert W. Peterson)
75 Harvey Penick's Little Red Book (Harvey Penick with Bud Shrake)
76 Whatever Happened to Gorgeous George? (Joe Jares)
77 Annapurna (Arlene Blum)
78 The Great American Novel (Philip Roth)
79 Soccer in Sun and Shadow (Eduardo Galeano)
80 The Story of American Golf (Herbert Warren Wind)
81 Inside Edge (Christine Brennan)
82 Farewell to Sport (Paul Gallico)
83 Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times (Thomas Hauser)
84 Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? (Jimmy Breslin)
85 The Complete Book of Running (James F. Fixx)
86 The Science of Hitting (Ted Williams)
87 Only a Game (Robert Daley)
88 The Joy of Sports (Michael Novak)
89 The Lords of the Rings (Vyv Simson and Andrew Jennings)
90 Road Swing (Steve Rushin)
91 Golf in the Kingdom (Michael Murphy)
92 Game Misconduct (Russ Conway)
93 No Cheering in the Press Box (Jerome Holtzman)
94 Beer and Circus (Murray Sperber)
95 The Harder They Fall (Budd Schulberg)
96 The Tumult and the Shouting (Grantland Rice)
97 SportsWorld (Robert Lipsyte)
98 The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings (William Brashler)
99 The Miracle of Castel di Sangro (Joe McGinniss)
100 Little Girls in Pretty Boxes (Joan Ryan)

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*Note: Royal Steele Ventures is in no way affiliated with the publishers of these lists, nor are we involved with the creation of the lists. We also do not guarantee that titles are linked to the products intended by lists, including differences between paperback and hard cover titles.