best sports biographies

Am looking for help here. I'm compiling a summer reading list for my sports section of the best baseball biographies of the past five years (2002 through present). Please recommend any that you especially liked ...

Thanks.

SheaS

 

I loved "Luckiest Man" by Jonathan Eig.

Others that were very good (I thought):

Leigh Montville's "The Big Bam"
Jane Leavy's "Sandy Koufax"
Of course, David Maraniss' "Clemente"
And one that I really liked was "A Well Paid Slave" about Curt Flood. Don't remember the writer's name, but the book was really excellent.

 

One more: I got deep into a Pepper Martin biography called "Pepper Martin: A Baseball Biography" by Ron Briley. It was surprisingly excellent.

 

The one that popped into my head was Jane Leavy's Koufax book that Heinz mentioned. I'm not huge on biographies, but I really enjoyed that one.

 

I imagine you'd have to put Kriegel's "Namath" and "Pistol" on there as well, thinking on it.

 

As did I, and I have little interest in baseball.

I've heard good things about the recent book on Maravich, the one Jones mentioned, but I haven't read it.

 

Montville's book on Ted Williams was excellent as well.

 

I mostly enjoyed it, but damn the end made me sad.

 

The Curt Flood book is excellent.

Koufax and Clemente also.

The Namath book bummed me out. He wasn't a loser per se, but you find out he damaged his career by drinking all the time.

That's not how I like to remember Joe Namath, but there it is...........

 

Loved the Koufax book by Jane Leavy. The Clemente book is next on my list.

Also should add "The Old Ball Game," by Frank DeFord. It's essentially a dual bio of McGraw/Mathewson. Great storytelling.

And let me give a shoutout to a friend's book ... "Red Legs and Black Sox," by Susan Dellinger. A unique and well-told bio/memoir of the author's grandfather, Edd Roush, a Hall of Fame center fielder for Cincinnati.

 

There's a really good Billy Martin biography floating out there somewhere, too, isn't there? Remember reading it a whiles ago but not who wrote it.

 

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