By Kim J. Harmon

If you’re asking me (and I know you’re not – unless that’s the phone call I missed last week – but I’m telling you anyway) your 2007 summer sports reading should begin and end with Rick Reilly.

The Sports Illustrated columnist has a new book out, Hate Mail From Cheerleaders and Other Adventures from the Life of Reilly (©2007 published by Time, Incorporated Home Entertainment, 318 pages) that compiles 100 of his favorite columns from the last six years, with the keynote being a column he wrote saying that cheerleading isn’t a sport. Let’s face it, the guy can make you laugh one week and make you cry the next and if that isn’t top drawer writing then I don’t know what is.

But there’s more. One of the funniest things he ever wrote was Who’s Your Caddy? Looping for the Great, Near Great, and Reprobates of Golf (©2003, published Broadway Books, 272 pages) where he writes about carrying the bags of people like Jack Nicklaus, David Duval, Tom Lehman, John Daly, Casey Martin, Jill McGill, Bob Newhart, Donald Trump and Deepak Chopra and gained a whole bunch of new insights about the game and about life in general.

Chopra “decomposes” on the green.

Daly flashes him.

Las Vegas high rollers use all kinds of tricks as they bet $100,000 or more a round.

What is even funnier than all that, too, is Reilly describing his ineptitude as a looper – from jangling the clubs, dropping the bag, improperly raking the traps, giving improper yardages, giving bad reads, uttering the wrong words, and failing to tend the pin.

Someone on the beach or at poolside or rockin’ on the back porch will just fly through those two books, but that’s the column format for you. Reilly has also written some funny fiction so why not grab a copy of Missing Links (©1997, published by Doubleday, 278 pages) or Shanks for Nothing (©2006, published by Doubleday, 272 pages). You don’t necessarily have to read ‘em in order; it’s just better that way. And what they do is show you the life of Raymond Hart, aka Stick, a darn good golfer who would love nothing more than to write his greeting cards and play golf with his buddies, the “Chops, like Two Down, Dannie and Thud at Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Course and Deli, nominated as the worst golf course in America.

In Missing Links, “Ponky is a little slice of paradise – if you picture paradise with a rusted-out ‘57 Chevy on the 8th hole and ninety-five-cent egg sandwiches waiting after the round. Mostly, the Chops like to bet, a habit that’s about to get them into serious trouble. Just adjacent to Ponky, over a twelve-foot-high hedge, lies the Mayflower Country Club, the most exclusive private club in all of Boston. For the Chops, it is both an irritant and a lure. Tortured by the Mayflower’s immaculately manicured fairways and intrigued by its fanatical exclusivity, the Chops propose a bet. Stick, the devious Two Down, and the slyly beautiful Dannie, Stick’s sometime bedmate, plunk down a thousand dollars each, a small fortune for people who sometimes take the bus to the course. The first to play all 18 holes at the Mayflower wins the pot. Lying, cheating and fraud are encouraged. But as each of these three pursue their quest – and one another’s money – the charm of their odd friendships, and their strange loyalty to Ponky, begin to unravel. One of the three will win The Bet, but it seems a hollow victory.”

In Shanks For Nothing, Stick attempts to qualify for the British Open in order to save his marriage to Dannie, save his friend Two Down, and save his beloved golf club.

Gosh almighty, it doesn’t get better than that.

But while were on the subject of golf,  John Feinstein – author of such great sports books as A Season on the Brink – heads to starting point for some of the game’s future legends … and fading stars. Tales from Q School: Inside Golf’s Fifth Major (©2007, published by Little, Brown & Company, 343 pages) takes hard look at the tournament “that separates champions from mortals. It is the starting point for the careers of future legends and can be the final stop on the down escalator for fading stars. The annual PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament is one of the most grueling competitions in any sport. Every fall, veterans and talented hopefuls sweat through six rounds of hell at Q school, as the tournament is universally known, to get a shot at the PGA Tour, vying for the 30 slots available. The grim reality: If you don’t make it through Q school, you’re not on the PGA tour. You’re out. And those who make it to the six-day finals are the lucky ones.”

Feinstein provides the inside story directly from the players – the rising stars, the hopelessly hopeful, and the ones who fail – who want nothing more than a shot at glory.

Okay, enough golf. Now that the National Basketball Association draft is over and we can go about our business figuring out who is going to be the biggest bust of the first round, why not read the story of perhaps the greatest basketball player who ever lived in Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich (©2007 by Mark Kriegel, published by The Free Press, 400 pages). Pistol – with those floppy socks and bushy head of hair – was a shooting, dribbling and passing phenom and without question the greatest college basketball player ever. Remember, before the advent of the three-point shot Pistol still canned 3,667 points in only three years at Southeastern Louisiana. Kriegel explores how, “in the NBA, he was a five-time All-Star, but his virtuosity grated against team-oriented systems. Off the court, Maravich was an eccentric, often reclusive outsider. After injury forced his retirement in 1980, he sank into alcoholism and depression. He had just settled peacefully into his conversion to evangelical Christianity when a heart attack struck him down while he was playing in a church pickup game.”

If you’re a fan of, or can tolerate, the Boston Red Sox and assorted institutions that revolve around them, then a nice little memoir to pick up could be Senior Year: A Father, A Son, and High School Baseball (©2007 by Dan Shaughnessy, published by Houghton Mifflin, 240 pages). A columnist for The Boston Globe, Shaughnessy writes about his son’s senior year in high school baseball and how it affected their relationship.

“Sam Shaughnessy came by his love of sports naturally. As a boy his father was so baseball obsessed that he played games by himself and didn’t even let himself win. Sam was born a natural hitter and quickly ascended the ranks of youth sports. Now nicknamed the 3-2 Kid for his astonishing ability to hover between success and failure in everything he does, Sam is finally a senior, and it’s all on the line: what college to attend; how to keep his grades up and his head down until graduation; and whether or not his final high school baseball season, which features foul weather, a hitting slump, and a surprising clash with a longtime coach, will end in disappointment or triumph.”

Shaughnessy brings up his own feelings of Ted Williams, Roger Clemens and Larry Bird and that in itself may make it hard for local New York Yankees or New York Mets fans to stomach, but the book is about the rite of passage that is sports. That should make everything alright.

Now, we’re not saying anyone reading this is old enough to remember the 1908 baseball season, but maybe someone’s grandfather was and liked to talk about it at family picnics. Well, Crazy ‘08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History (©2007 by Cait Murphy, published by Smithsonian Institution Press), recounts that season with tales of Frank Chance and the Chicago Cubs, Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants, Honus Wagner and the Pittsburgh Pirates, Cy Young and the Boston Red Sox, Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers, and Walter Johnson and the Washington Senators.

1908 – the year baseball grew up and the last time the Cubs won the World Series.

Columnist George Will said, “Readers of Crazy ‘08 can almost smell the whiskey and taste the pigs’ knuckles. This rollicking tour of that season will entertain readers interested in social history, will fascinate students of baseball and will cause today’s Cub fans to experience an unaccustomed feeling – pride – as their team (endures) the 2007 season, the 99th season of its rebuilding effort.

A little later than that – almost 30 years later – there is the story of The Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-from-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series – and America’s Heart – During  the Great Depression (©2007 by John Heidenry, published by Perseus, 344 pages). It is the story of “one of the best, and one of the wackiest, teams of all time, during one of the most vital eras in baseball. The year 1934 marked the lowest point of the Great Depression, when the U.S. went off the gold standard, banks collapsed by the score, and millions of Americans were out of work. Epic baseball feats offered welcome relief from the hardships of daily life.”

A little closer to the heart of some Newtown locals (specifically the players and fans of the Newtown Sandy Hooks vintage base ball team) would be The Beer & Whiskey League: The Illustrated History of the American Association – Baseball’s Renegade Major League (©2007 by David Nemec, published by The Lyons Press, 272 pages). This was back in the day – 1882 to 1891 – when real men didn’t wear gloves, a decade when “baseball was controlled by the owners of the six teams in the National League. In keeping with the morals of the day, Sunday games were forbidden, liquor wasn’t sold at parks, and admission was kept high to keep out the “common element.” Baseball was a gentleman’s game. Then came the American Association, the “Beer & Whiskey League.” Baseball would never be the same. True to its nickname, the league ushered in the most freewheeling years of baseball, challenging the National League’s hold on the nation’s pastime, cutting admission in half, playing Sundays, selling liquor in its ballparks, and fielding exceptional players.”

The lively history of the league also includes more than 200 rare photographs of teams and players, most never before published. Not exactly a light read for the beach or pool, but a treasure nevertheless.

On a more important note, there is Man in the Middle (©2007 by John Amaechi and Chris Bull, published by ESPN, 304 pages), the chronicle of an NBA star who endured “endless obstacles to his hoop dreams – being abandoned by his father, being cut from his first college team, recovering from a life-threatening injury, playing for abusive coaches, and losing his mother - while also protecting a vital secret that could have ended his career: He was gay.”

Amaechi played in the NBA for six seasons and was honored by the basketball Hall of Fame for scoring the first points of the new millennium. In 2001, he formed the ABC Foundation and built the Amaechi Basketball Centre (he plans to build five more) in his hometown of Manchester, England, dedicated to personal excellence, mentoring, and counseling young people through sport. He is also the founder of Animus Consulting and a regular commentator on British television.

The book garnered some rave reviews and some harsh criticisms in the aftermath. Now, read it for yourself.

And, finally, horse racing.

Remember the story of Barbaro, the Triple Crown contender who suffered a shattered leg at the Preakness in 2006? In Barbaro: A Nation’s Love Story (©2007 by Tom Philbin and Pamela Brodowsky, published by HarperCollins, 189 pages), you will relive the story of Barbaro and a fight for survival that he ultimately lost.