Bracketology: 21st-Century Sports Books

A while back I posted about the “Chasing Dreams” exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, specifically Dan Okrent’s “bracket” of Jewish Major Leaguers.

Since then, I’ve perused the book whence that came — The Final Four of Everything, co-edited by Mark Reityer and Richard Sandomir, sports media writer for The New York Times.

Turns out there are a few other baseball-related items in the book, including Sports Cliches, by Steve Rushin of Sports Illustrated; Baseball Moments, by John Thorn; Sportswriters, by Glenn Stout; and Yogi Berra Wisdom by Dave “No-Relation” Kaplan. I’ll write about some of those a bit later.

For this entry, however, let’s concentrate on Will Leitch’s picks for 21st-Century Sports Books.

The premise for all the brackets is, start with 32, then winnow it down to the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four, and the final finals. (So in that, the title is a bit erroneous since this is really kind of a “best of” scenario.)

Out of his 32 picks, Leitch — whose own sports books include Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball and God Save the Fan: How Steroid Hypocrites, Soul-Sucking Suits, and a Worldwide Leader Not Named Bush Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports — selected 13 baseball titles; other sports represented included basketball, football, boxing, horse racing, tennis, rugby, soccer, and Scrabble(!). So that’s a pretty good representation of the national pastime.

So in the round of 32

Moneyball* (Michael Lewis) beat The Punch (John Feinstein)
Spalding’s World Tour* (Mark Lamster) lost to My Losing Season (Pat Conroy)
The Soul of Baseball* (Joe Posnanski) bested Triumph (Jeremy Schaap)
Fantasyland* (Sam Walker) beat The Miracle of St. Anthony (Adrian Wojnarowski)
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life* (Richard Ben Cramer) beat fellow baseball title The Crowd Sounds Happy (Nicholas Dawidoff)
The Bronx is Burning* (Jonathan Mahler) beat You Cannot Be Serious (John McEnroe with James “No Relation” Kaplan)
Game of Shadows* (Fainaru-Wada/Williams) lost to Word Freak (Stefan Fatsis)
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy* (Jane Leavy) beat Big Game, Small World (Alexander Wolff)
How Soccer Explains the World (Franklin Foer) beat Opening Day* (Jonathan Eig)
Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer (Warren St. John) beat Three Nights in August* (Buzz Bissinger)
Clemente* (David Maraniss) beat fellow baseball title The Teammates* (David Halberstam)

* indicates the title is included in 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die.

In the next round

Moneyball beats My Losing Season
Boys Will Be Boys (Jeff Pearlman) beats The Soul of Baseball
Seabiscuit (Laura Hillenbrand) beats Fantasyland
DiMaggio beats To Hate Like This (Will Blythe)
Bronx is Burning beats Word Freak
Sandy Koufax beats How Soccer Explains
:07 second or Less (Jack McCallum) beats Clemente

In the next round

Moneyball beats Boys Will be Boys
DiMaggio beats Seabiscuit
Bronx beats How Soccer

So baseball provide three of the “final four.”

In the semifinals, Moneyball beats DiMaggio while Bronx beats Sunday Money (Jeff MacGregor).

And in the finals, Moneyball is deemed the best of “21st-Century Sports Books.”

I asked Leitch a few questions about his contribution via email.

“They asked, and I was honored that they did. I love the concept and frankly wish they were making more books like them. It seems a perfectly sustainable idea,” he wrote in response to how he came to be involved with the project.

How did he decide on the 32 books?

I didn’t want to repeat any authors, and I also wanted to make sure I had a wide variety of topics and age groups and viewpoints. Traditional books, quick flip books, that sort of thing. Though I haven’t seen the book in a while, so I might not remember everything correctly.

How did he pair them together within the brackets? A lot of matchups in the book, as a whole, seemed arbitrary to me.