The Norton Book of Sports

You know the old desert island game that lets you pick only one book as company for the rest of your days? Most folks pick the Bible or Shakespeare, but if sports are your game, you'll need go no further than this sports anthology. Sure, there are better collections of golf and baseball, but no one book sweeps across the vast landscape of the sporting scene with such breadth--and depth--as this lively, essential volume. It begins with a terrific essay by the peripatetic Plimpton riffing on his "Small Ball" theory, and just gets better from there. You want a heavyweight lineup? How's about one that includes Mark Twain, Donald Hall, A.J. Liebling, Sir Edmund Hillary, John McPhee, Roger Angell, the Wolfes (Tom and Thomas), James Joyce, Carl Sandburg, Maxine Kumin, Ring Lardner, John Updike, Red Smith, Gay Talese, and Robert Penn Warren? You want all-star selections? How's about William Hazlitt's "The Fight," Roger Kahn's "The Crucial Role Fear Plays in Sports," Wilfred Sheed's "The Old Man and the Tee," Tom McGuane's "The Longest Silence," Paul Gallico's "The Feel," and Updike's monumental "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." With stuff like that for company, you just might look forward to the marooning. --Jeff Silverman