March 2021 looks like it is going to be a fantastic month for new sports books.
With baseball season nearing, we have a ton of new releases about that game. Our Team, about the Cleveland Indians’ integration and quest for the World Series, looks like an especially good read. There is also So Many Ways to Lose, an in-depth look at the seemingly cursed New York Mets.
Basketball also has a couple of new releases this month including Bracketology: March Madness, College Basketball, and the Creation of a National Obsession which looks like a must-read ahead of the NCAA Tournament.
Other interesting looking releases include I Hate Running and You Can Too,Thirty Years in a White Haze, Footsteps of Federer, and Sidelined. It should be a good month for sports books.
Here is our list of the best new sports books for March 2020:
Best New Baseball Books: March 2021
Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball by Luke Epplin: Our Team tells the story of the integration of the Cleveland Indians and their quest for a World Series title through four key participants. Bill Veeck, the eccentric and visionary owner adept at exploding fireworks on and off the field. Larry Doby, a soft-spoken, hard-hitting pioneer whose major-league breakthrough shattered stereotypes that so much of white America held about Black ballplayers. Bob Feller, a pitching prodigy from the Iowa cornfields who set the template for the athlete as businessman. Satchel Paige, a legendary pitcher from the Negro Leagues whose belated entry into the majors whipped baseball fans across the country into a frenzy.
Together, as the foundation of a group that embodied the post bellum American soul on the whole its expectations and logical inconsistencies, these four men would enrapture the country by raging to the World Series- – at the same time changing the standards of what was conceivable in games.
So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets―the Best Worst Team in Sports by Devin Gordon: In So Many Ways to Lose, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after he got charged by a wild pig? Or on the other hand the time they blew a six-run 10th inning lead at the pinnacle of a pennant race? Or on the other hand the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was just two years prior, and it was all in the same season.
The Mets have an unparalleled present for getting it in reverse, doing the unimaginable, grabbing triumph from the jaws of annihilation, and afterward grabbing rout directly back once more.
The Best Team Over There: The Untold Story of Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Great War by Jim Leeke: Grover Cleveland Alexander served in the 342nd Field Artillery Regiment, which included big leaguers and star athletes among its officers and men. Normally, the regiment handled an exceptional ball club, yet it also faced hard service during the final weeks of the war. After the peace negotiation in November 1918, the unit attempted occupation obligation in Germany.
The Best Team Over There examines this crucial period closely: where Alexander was stationed, how he was trained, how he withstood the effects of combat and shelling, how he interacted with his fellow athletes and soldiers, and how the war changed his baseball career, revealing for the first time the little-known details of this critical stage in the legendary pitcher’s life and career.
Double Plays and Double Crosses: The Black Sox and Baseball in 1920 by Don Zminda: In Double Plays and Double Crosses: The Black Sox and Baseball in 1920, Don Zminda tells the story of an unforgettable team and an unforgettable year in baseball and American history.
Zminda uncovers in spellbinding subtlety how the Black Sox outrage unfurled in 1920, the degree of inclusion in game-fixing by outstanding players like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver, and the complicity of White Sox executives in concealing details of the scandal.
Likewise, Zminda gives an inside and out examination of games during the 1920 season that were likely fixed and the revelation during the time of other game-fixing embarrassments that shook baseball.
Comeback Season: My Unlikely Story of Friendship with the Greatest Living Negro League Baseball Players by Cam Perron: The uplifting, unlikely, and inspirational true story of the friendships formed between Cam Perron—a white, baseball-obsessed teenager from Boston—and hundreds of former professional Negro League players, who were still awaiting the recognition and compensation that they deserved from Major League Baseball more than fifty years after their playing days were over.
Sports fans—and anyone who enjoys a heartfelt story—will enjoy this book about unlikely friendships, the power of memories, and just how far a childhood interest can go.
Lights, Camera, Fastball: How the Hollywood Stars Changed Baseball by Dan Taylor: Dan Taylor delivers a fascinating look at the Hollywood Stars and their glorious twenty-year run in the Pacific Coast League. Led by Bob Cobb, owner of the heralded Brown Derby restaurant and known more famously as the creator of the Cobb salad, the Hollywood Stars took professional baseball to new levels. The team played in short pants, instigated rule changes, employed cheerleaders and movie-star beauty queens, pioneered baseball on television, eschewed trains for planes, and offered fans palatable delicacies never before served at the ballpark.
During the Hollywood Stars’ history, its celebrity owners pushed boundaries, challenged existing baseball norms, infuriated rivals, and produced an imaginative product, the likes of which the game had never before seen. Featuring interviews with former players, Lights, Camera, Fastball is an inside look at a team that was far ahead its time.
One Line Drive: A Life-Threatening Injury and a Faith-Fueled Comeback by Daniel Ponce de Leon with Tom Zenner: The path to achieving your dreams is not always easy. Daniel Ponce de Leon, a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, overcame many challenges to get to the major leagues. After making it, Daniel’s dream was almost shattered when he was struck in the head by one line drive. Spending weeks in the hospital and months recovering from a large epidural hematoma, skull fracture, brain swelling, and hemorrhaging, Daniel held on to his belief that he would one day pitch again at the highest level.
Fourteen months later, and fully recovered, he made his first major league start, becoming the fifth pitcher in modern major league history to throw seven innings of no-hit ball in his debut, one of the greatest debuts in MLB history.
In One Line Drive, Daniel retells his remarkable journey, sharing how he never would have made it without his faith in God and the support of family and friends. Full of grit, determination, and faith, Daniel’s story is an inspiring reminder to keep pressing on no matter the circumstances.
100 Miles of Baseball: 50 Games, One Summer by Dale Jacobs and Heidi LM Jacobs: For a large portion of their coexistences Dale Jacobs and Heidi LM Jacobs couldn’t envision a spring without baseball. Their season tickets renewal package consistently arrived on the bleakest day of winter, offering consolation that sunnier occasions were around the bend. Baseball was woven into the texture of their lives, interfacing them not exclusively to one another yet in addition to their families and accounts.
Yet, by 2017 it was evident something was awry: the appeal of another Sunday watching their Detroit Tigers had decayed to commitment. Not altogether sure the thing they were missing, they had a thought on where it very well may be found: in their own terrace. Drawing a range of 100 miles around their home in Windsor, Ontario, Dale and Heidi set an objective of seeing fifty games at all levels of competition over the following summer.
From bleachers behind high schools, to manicured university turf, to the steep concrete stands of major league parks, 100 Miles of Baseball tells the story of how two fans rediscovered their love of the game—and with it their relationships and the region they call home.
Best New Basketball Books: March 2021
Bracketology: March Madness, College Basketball, and the Creation of a National Obsession by Joe Lunardi with David Smale: There is no true Madness without the oft-debated question about what teams should be seeded where—from the Power-5 Blue Blood with some early season stumbles on their resume to the mid-major that rampaged through their less competitive conference season—and the inventor of Bracketology himself, Joe Lunardi, now reveals the mystery and science behind the legend.
While going in depth on his ever-evolving predictive formula, Lunardi compares great teams from different eras with intriguing results, talks to the biggest names in college basketball about their perception of Bracketology (both good and bad), and looks forward to the fate of the game and how Bracketology will help shape the discussion.
How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius: What Game Designers, Economists, Ballet Choreographers, and Theoretical Astrophysicists Reveal About the Greatest Game on Earth by Nick Greene: Basketball is the second-most famous game on the planet—a madly confounded game based on a mix of physicality, cunning, rules, intangibles, and superstardom.
Notwithstanding, while it’s charming to watch, the genuine explanation it works is on the grounds that it’s a round of culture, craftsmanship, and all the things that make us human. How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius deconstructs the game start to finish and afterward assembles it back once more, itemizing its complexities through reporting and dozens of interviews with experts.
Best New Running Books: March 2021
I Hate Running and You Can Too: How to Get Started, Keep Going, and Make Sense of an Irrational Passion by Brendan Leonard: The writer of this book loathes running. He abhors it such a lot of that he once logged 52 long distance race length runs in 52 weeks. Now he’s sharing everything he’s learned about the sport so that you can hate it too.
Running causes us get responsibility, create persistence, find self-restraint, find mental sturdiness, and demonstrate to ourselves that we can accomplish something requesting
Loaded with intelligence, humor, mentality, tips, and statements—and in excess of sixty enlightening outlines—I Hate Running and You Can Too conveys a ground-breaking message of inspiration from a genuinely relatable tutor.
Best New Golf Books: March 2021
The Story of The Masters: Drama, joy and heartbreak at golf’s most iconic tournament by David Barrett: The Story of the Masters is the complete year-by-year history of the world’s most well known golf competition. Veteran golf writer David Barrett draws upon contemporaneous reporting and other source material to offer sensational records of every year the competition has been played, beginning in 1934.
As the decades progressed, the game’s most noteworthy players have sparkled their most splendid at the Masters. Many golfing careers have been shaped and defined by this competition, and Barrett shares obscure and failed to remember accounts of the game’s stars, but also the many others who challenged them over the years at Augusta.
Best New Skiing Books: March 2021
Thirty Years in a White Haze by Dan Egan and Eric Wilbur: Thirty Years in a White Haze: Dan Egan’s Story of Worldwide Adventure and the Evolution of Extreme Skiing chronicles Dan’s trials, successes, and losses, as well as the technological boom and subsequent growth of the outdoor media industry.
The book maps reality, unwinding history as Egan integrates his own family’s story, the ever-present mortality of his namesake, his granddad’s inclusion in integrating Boston’s schools, and the ascent of extreme skiing and innovation into the new millennium.
A tribute to a day to day existence loaded up with interest, development, opportunity, and its expenses, Dan Egan and Eric Wilbur’s new book guarantees a weighty portion of humor, anticipation, rush, and narrative, as thirty years of cloudiness disseminates to lucidity.
Best New Extreme Sports Books: March 2021
Thrill Seekers: 15 Remarkable Women in Extreme Sports by Ann McCallum Staats: What is the charm of the extreme? Who are the ones who search out and dominate at sports outside the traditional, for example, cave diving, wingsuit flying, or Formula 1 racing? This assortment of female adventure dynamos is as fascinating as it it is empowering.
Thrill Seekers introduces readers to a different and intriguing choice of ladies whose assurance, coarseness, and mental fortitude have pushed every one of them into a daily existence a long way from the sidelines. Every section acquaints readers with modern role models and pioneers, change-producers who opt into a life of risk—however one of astonishing rewards. Their accounts rouse youngsters to move toward existence with a similar striking purpose.
More Best New Sports Books: March 2021
Footsteps of Federer: A Fan’s Pilgrimage Across 7 Swiss Cantons in 10 Acts by Dave Seminara: Dave Seminara is a mad traveler and tennis lifer who has written about Roger Federer for years. A pair of autoimmune diseases and a knee surgery kept Dave from playing tennis for years, but as he inched toward recovery, he had a bright idea: why not start his tennis comeback on hallowed ground—courts that his hero Roger Federer graced in Switzerland.
This book is an account of Seminara’s travels across seven Swiss cantons in search of insights into Federer’s character, which is inextricably linked to his deep roots in, and love for, his country. His Federer pilgrimage took him to Switzerland’s most important abbey, where he prayed with Abbot Urban Federer; to the vineyard of Jakob Federer from Berneck, where the Federer clan originated from; to the stunning villa where Roger and Mirka were married; and to many of the neighborhoods and tennis clubs where Roger has lived and trained at over the years.
Fans: How Watching Sports Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Understanding by Larry Olmsted: This book sees a hit writer turn his aptitude to a subject that has never been completely investigated, delivering a highly entertaining game changer that uses brand-new research to show us for why being a sports fan is useful for us independently and is a power for positive change in the public arena. Fans is a passionate reminder
of how games, teams, and the communities dedicated to them are vital to our lives.
Referring to captivating new studies on fandom, Larry Olmsted presents the defense that the more you relate to a sports team, the better your social, mental, and actual wellbeing is; the more significant your connections are; and the more associated and more joyful you are.
Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America by Julie DiCaro: Shrill meets Brotopia in this personal and researched look at women’s rights and issues through the lens of sports, from an award-winning sports journalist and women’s advocate.
Covering everything from the oppressive online climate at Barstool Sports to the misogynist treatment of Serena Williams and expert ladies’ groups battling for equivalent compensation and treatment, and glancing back at spearheading ladies who first took on the patriarchy in sports media.
Sidelined will enlighten the manners in which sports present a microcosm of life as a woman in modern America—and the power in fighting back for a better future.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments any other great books coming out in March 2021 so that we can add them to our reading list!