Other books that might interest you

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  Fringes - Life on the Edge of...

  Ben Mercer

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  LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE 2020 
  Sports books tend to detail extraordinary achievements, triumphs against the odds or commemorate World Cup winning captains. 
  This book does not do that. 
  For many, playing professional sport is the Dream Job. Few manage it, very few make it to the top and for the rest, life is very different. This is their story. 
  In Fringes, Ben Mercer invites you to witness life at the outer edges of professional rugby. This is a first hand account of what life is like as a journeyman professional athlete. You play, but to the wider public you don't exist. You earn but you don't drive a flash car. You sometimes pack out a stadium but sometimes, you play in a deserted park. This is the story for the majority of sports professionals. Only the minority taste the top, only one person gets to lift the cup or win the medal, only 15 get to play for England at any one time. For the rest, that’s not the case. 
  Ben Mercer is a former professional rugby player who after becoming disillusioned and uninspired plying his trade in the English Second Division, accepted an offer out of the blue to go to France and do something different - help an amateur team turn professional. This is a first hand account of what life is like in the lower reaches of professional sport - where your employment status is as precarious as your health and barely anyone will know your name. 
  If you've wanted to know what life is really like as a professional athlete, on the Fringes, away from the glitz and glamour of the international game then look no further.

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  That Season of Hope - A Team A...

  Keith Larson with Nancy Larson

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  "That Season of Hope" is the story of a city, a football team - and a dying girl and her last wish. 
  It is a timeless human drama revealing everlasting truths about the power of purpose, the splendor in letting go - and the real impact of a wish. 
  It is about NFL football, and the men who play it. 
  And it provides a practical answer to the question, "To what end, Faith?" in a world where tragic things happen to innocent people.

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  Racing to the Finish - My Story

  Dale Earnhardt Jr., Ryan McGee

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  Racecar driver Earnhardt was at the top of his game—until a minor crash resulted in a concussion that would eventually end his 18-year career. In his only authorized book, Dale shares the inside track on his life and work, reflects on NASCAR, the loss of his dad, and his future as a broadcaster, businessperson, and family man. 
  It was a seemingly minor crash at Michigan International Speedway in June 2016 that ended the day early for NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt Jr. What he didn’t know was that it would also end his driving for the year. He’d dealt with concussions before, but no two are the same. Recovery can be brutal, and lengthy. 
  When Dale retired from professional stock car racing in 2017, he walked away from his career as a healthy man. But for years, he had worried that the worsening effects of multiple racing-related concussions would end not only his time on the track but his ability to live a full and happy life. 
  Torn between a race-at-all-costs culture and the fear that something was terribly wrong, Earnhardt tried to pretend that everything was fine, but the private notes about his escalating symptoms that he kept on his phone reveal a vicious cycle: suffering injuries on Sunday, struggling through the week, then recovering in time to race again the following weekend. In this candid reflection, Earnhardt opens up for the first time about:The physical and emotional struggles he faced as he fought to close out his career on his own termsHis frustration with the slow recovery from multiple racing-related concussionsHis admiration for the woman who stood by him through it allHis determination to share his own experience so that others don’t have to suffer in silence 
  Steering his way to the final checkered flag of his storied career proved to be the most challenging race and most rewarding finish of his life.

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  Hail Mary - The Rise and Fall of...

  Britni De La Cretaz, Lyndsey...

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  In 1967, a Cleveland businessman had a brilliant idea: why not start a women's football team? It was conceived as a gimmick and a publicity stunt in the vein of the Harlem Globetrotters. He recruited women to compete as a traveling football troupe; much to his surprise, he learned that women really wanted to play—and play hard. Hail Mary is the story of the unlikely rise of the National Women's Football League and the players who loved a game that society told them they shouldn't be playing. In nineteen cities around the country, against the backdrop of second-wave feminism and the passage of Title IX, these athletes broke new barriers and showed adoring crowds what women were capable of physically. Thousands of people came to watch—perhaps to gawk at first but then, in the end, to cheer. Hail Mary is a rollicking chronicle of fearless women-players on the Detroit Demons, the Toledo Troopers, the LA Dandelions, and more—bringing us into the stadiums where they broke records, the small-town lesbian bars where they were recruited, and the backrooms where the league was conceived, and where it ended. Hail Mary is a celebration of women athletes and their fight on and off the field—and a powerful story of the league that changed their lives and the course of women's sports.

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  What Do You Think of Ted...

  Richard Ben Cramer

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  Richard Ben Cramer, Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed biographer of Joe DiMaggio decodes baseball icon Ted Williams and finds not just a great player, but also a great man.When legendary Red Sox hitter Ted Williams died on July 5, 2002, newspapers reviewed the stats, compared him to other legends of the game, and declared him the greatest hitter who ever lived.In 1986, Richard Ben Cramer spent months on a profile of Ted Williams, and the result was the Esquire article that has been acclaimed ever since as one of the finest pieces of sports reporting ever written.Given special acknowledgment in The Best American Sportswriting of the Century and adapted for a coffee-table book called Ted Williams: The Seasons of the Kid, the original piece is now available in this special edition, with new material about Williams's later years.While his decades after Fenway Park were out of the spotlight -- the way Ted preferred it -- they were arguably his richest, as he loved and inspired his family, his fans, the players, and the game itself. This is a remembrance for the ages.

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  The Greatest Gambling Story Ever...

  Mark Paul

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  The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told is an inspiring personal narrative about a filly who broke through the male-dominated world of horseracing and inspired crowds of men and women alike, along with a trio of gamblers who embark on an unforgettable adventure that’s as epic as the historic victory of Winning Colors. It’s Seabiscuit meets Narcos, and the best true-life gambling story ever told. 
  In the late 1980s, a spectacular 3-year-old female racehorse named Winning Colors was being groomed for success under her famous “Hollywood” trainer, D. Wayne Lukas, and the billionaire owner of the San Diego Chargers pro-football team, Eugene Klein. Meanwhile, three fun-loving gamblers, Miami Paul, Dino Mateo, and Big Bernie believed that Winning Colors could be the unlikely female winner of the 1988 Kentucky Derby. 
  When the gamblers unknowingly place their longshot bet with members of a suspected drug cartel at a racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico, they must figure out how to claim their prize - without getting killed in the process. In a heart-pounding race of their own across the U.S.-Mexico border, the trio come face-to-face with suspected killers, are arrested by the Border Patrol, and fumble their way through the riskiest bet of their lives. 

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