Showing titles in Essays & Commentary

The colorful, sentimental, funny, affectionate, cantankerous memoir by the most colorful, funniest, most cantankerous-- and probably the most revered-- sportswriter of the last fifty years. Dan Jenkins is accepted as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) golf writer of all time, wrote beloved bestselling novels and abused more corporate expense accounts than anyone who ever lived. It's a touching, laugh-out-loud tribute to the romanticism of old-time sportswriting-- and the glory days of sports.

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...

A treasury of thrilling memories for fans of baseball's most storied franchise. When it comes to baseball glory, no other team comes close to the New York Yankees, winners of forty American League pennants and 27 World Series championships. Amazing Tales from the Yankee Dugout is a compilation of the funniest, strangest, and most unique stories, anecdotes, and tall tales that have been attributed to baseball’s legendary New York Yankees through the years.

There are really two games, the one you see and the one you don't. The way I see it, the best way to use access to both worlds is to illuminate and reveal, not idolize and adore. It's better to be wrong than to be played for a fool. – Colin Cowherd In this age of billion dollar athletic...

A chronicle of 1998's major golf tournaments follows Tiger Woods, Fred Couples, and other great players as they compete in the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA. What does it take to win a major championship and reach the absolute pinnacle of golf? Through a season of the...

Jim Harrison, Pam Houston, Ted Leeson, Nick Lyons, Thomas McGuane, and more, share stories of fly fishing and life on the river. This marvelous collection features stories from some of America’s finest and most respected writers about one of the world’s most solitary and satisfying sports: fly fishing. For the first time, the stories of thirty-one acclaimed writers including Kim Barnes, Walter Bennett, Russell Chatham, Guy de la Valdne, Robert DeMott, Chris Dombrowski, Ron Ellis, Jim Fergus, Kate Fox, Charles Gaines, Bruce Guernsey, Jim Harrison, Pam Houston, Michael Keaton, Greg Keeler, Sydney Lea, Ted Leeson, Nick Lyons, Craig Mathews, Thomas McGuane, Joseph Monninger, Howard Frank Mosher, Jake Mosher, Craig Nova, Margot Page, Datus Proper, Le Anne Schreiber, Paul Schullery, W. D. Wetherell, and Robert Wrigley come together in one collection. Fly fishers and non-fly fishers alike will recognize in these poignant tales the universal aspects of the appreciation of nature, the necessity of conservation, and the joy and knowledge that come from time spent on fresh and salt water. This is a delightful, handsome volume that captures the allure and spirit of fly fishing and those that love it.

What’s it like to race across the blacktop of the nation’s most famous track? How does it feel to smash into a concrete wall while going over 200 miles per hour? This exciting, humorous, and poignant collection of tales takes listeners inside the most exciting race in America. Tales from the Indianapolis 500 captures horrific collisions and sweet victories from drivers past and present.

ECW was one extreme contradiction piled on top of another. It was an incredibly influential company in the world of professional wrestling during the 1990s, yet it was never profitable. It portrayed itself as the ultimate in anti-authority rebellion, but its leadership was, at various points, working covertly with the two wrestling giants, the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling. Most of all, it blurred the line between real life and the fantasy world of professional wrestling like no other company before it.

Fly fishermen everywhere will enjoy these varied, witty, and engaging adventures by one of America’s finest outdoor writers. There is a long section on trout fishing called "Brookies, Browns, and Bows", and another on the challenges and excitement of saltwater fly fishing, and an exciting group of memoirs about fishing near home and in far-flung and often exotic places - like the Minipi, Bighorn, and Norfolk rivers, where the trout can beggar the imagination, and where frustration can be the occupational hazard.

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?

Golfing With Dad is a heartwarming collection of golf's best players' favorite memories with their fathers and how those memories shaped them not only as players but as the men and women they are today. Many professional golfers have been greatly influenced by their fathers, and some of the very best have contributed interviews to this special book, edited by longtime Golf magazine editor David Barrett.

For more than 20 years, Heavey has staked a claim as one of America's best sportsmen writers. In feature stories and his Field & Stream column A Sportsman's Life, he has taken audiences across the country and beyond to experience his triumphs and failures as a suburban dad who happens to love hunting and fishing. This new collection gathers together a wide range of his best work - tales that are odes to the notion that enthusiasm is more important than skill and testaments to the enduring power of the natural world.

If John Gierach is living in a fool's paradise, then it's a paradise that his regular listeners will recognize and new fans will delight in discovering. Laced with the inimitable blend of wit and wisdom that have made him fly-fishing's foremost scribe, Fool's Paradise chronicles the fishing life in all its glory (catching your biggest fish ever) and squalor (being stranded in a tent during a soaking rainstorm). In Gierach's world, both experiences are valuable, and perhaps inevitable.

In No Shortage of Good Days John Gierach takes listeners from the Smokies in Tennessee to his home waters in Colorado, from the Canadian Maritimes to Mexico - saltwater or fresh, it's all fishing and all irresistible. As always he writes perceptively about a wide range of subjects: the charm of familiar waters, the etiquette of working with new fishing guides, night fishing when the trout and the mosquitoes are both biting, and fishing snobbery, a pitfall he seems to have largely avoided.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tales of Golf and Sport contains Chicken Soup for the Soul’s 101 best stories and poems about golfers, golfing, and other sports. This book has fresh appeal to golfers and makes a fabulous gift. Golfers are a special breed. They endure bad weather, early wake-up calls, great expense, and "interesting" clothing to engage in their favorite sport. This is not a book about how to play golf - it is a book about how it feels to play golf. Professional and amateur athletes contribute stories from the heart, yielding a book about the human side of golf and other sports.

Bright Rivers chronicles the angling passions and frustrations of one of fly-fishing's greatest men of letters. A city dweller trapped in the complexities of modern life, Nick Lyons has always found solace in his pilgrimages to great rivers. It is there that he fishes for trout, and in Bright Rivers, Lyons recounts the sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious experiences of his expeditions to the Delaware, Beaverkill, Madison, Big Hole, and Yellowstone rivers, sharing reminiscences of trout taken, released, and sometimes lost.

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.

This collection of 20 essays and articles on mountaineering and adventure by David Roberts, selected from the published works of two decades, showcases one of the most highly regarded writers in the field. The articles are composed of three types: Adventures (Roberts' own climbs and outings), Profiles (other adventurers), and Reflections (meditative essays about the meaning of the whole business). Roberts ranges the globe (Africa, Alaska, New Guinea) and introduces unique personalities (Reinhold Messner, John Roskelly, Don Sheldon).

Many of us grew up scoring a thousand glorious NHL goals in our minds, and on our streets and corner rinks. We won the Stanley Cup over and over in our imaginations. What happened to those childhood heroics? We packed them in a box with our hockey cards and forgot them. Growing Up Hockey uses the heartwarming and comical exploits of a house-league third-liner to prompt us to re-live our memories of hockey glory.

In this hilariously funny essay collection, former ESPN columnist Rick Reilly com­piles the best of his sports columns - essays that include his expert opinion on athlete tattoos, NFL cheerleaders, and even running with the bulls in Pamplona.