By Kim J. Harmon

Forget about The Da Vinci Code or the latest potboiler by John Grisham, if you are looking for some fun, interesting, informative, outrageous or even infuriating reading then you have come to the right place.

From the great rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees to the latest self-serving diatribe from Pete Rose, the sporting world offers some nice reading choices for that trip to the beach or poolside.

Read on –

Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry (©2004 by Harvery Frommer and Frederic Frommer, published by Sports Publishing LLC, 247 pages, $24.95) – Thanks to 1978 and thanks to Aaron Boones home run in the seventh game of the 2003 American League championship series, there remains no greater sports rivalry than Red Sox and Yankees.

The Frommers take a look at the rivalry through exclusive interviews with former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, former governors Mario Cuomo of New York and Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, congressmen, reporters, broadcasters, and especially former and current players, coaches, managers and front-office execs from the Red Sox and Yankees, including Don Zimmer, Theo Epstein, Nomar Garciaparra, Willie Randolph, Derek Lowe, Jason and Jeremy Giambi, Lou Meroni, Dwight Evans, Lou Piniella, Mike Torrez, Johnny Pesky, Phil Rizzuto, Hawk Harrelson, Bob Watson, Ralph Houk, Eddie Yost, Dwight Evans, Chico Walker, Tony Cloninger, Casey Fossum, Steve Karsay, Grady Little, Mike Stanley, Jim Kaat, Jerry Remy, Mel Parnell and more.

The books features a Rivalry Timeline, which begins all the way back in 1895 with the momentous birth of one George Herman Ruth. Along with in-depth profiles of players like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium, there may be no better coffee table book out there for fans of these two teams.

Red Zone (©2003 by Mike Lupica, published by Putnam, 352 pages, $24.95) – Jack Molloy first surfaced in Bump and Run after inheriting the legendary New York Hawks professional football team and somehow leading them to a Super Bowl championship.

Molloy returns In Red Zone, faced with the prospect of losing his interest in the team to businessman Big Dick Miles.

Sometimes his characters seem too nutty to be believable, but columnist Mike Lupica has spend a good part of his life in the locker rooms and front offices of professional sports teams and he has a way of making you believe his characters are not all that nutty in comparison.

Lupica has written a long line of funny sports novels. Red Zone may be his best.

Images of a Champion: Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France (©2004 by Lance Armstrong and photographer Graham Watson, published by Rodale Press, 208 pages, $35) – Recent accusations of doping aside, Lance Armstrong has provided the world with one of the most uplifting and inspiring stories in recent memory.

A cancer survivor, Armstrong somehow brought himself back from the brink of depth with the will and heart of a champion. Watson chronicles the Armstrong’s accomplishments with a full array of photographs.

Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA’s Culture of Rape, Assault, and Drug Use (©2004 by Jeff Benedict, published by HarperCollins, 256 pages, $24.95) – It is not just the Kobe Bryant rape case and the arrest of basketball player Carlton Dotson for allegedly murdering his teammate Patrick Dennehy.

No, the image of basketball – specifically the NBA – has been repeatedly tarnished by the behavior of its players for years. With Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, the game had a much more honorable image but recent off-court discoveries (players with multiple children by multiple women, sex clubs frequented by players, drug problems) have given the sport a very bad black eye.

Out of Bounds is an expose that will open the eyes of some fans who have told themselves it hasn’t been all that bad.

Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero (©2004 by Leigh Montville, published by Doubleday & Company, 400 pages, $26.95) – It is unfortunate that the only memory young baseball fans have of Ted Williams is the bizarre effort to cryogenically preserve his remains and the family acrimony that it involved.

But Sports Illustrated’s Leigh Montville re-invigorates the legend of The Splendid Splinter, the last man to bat .400 in a season. While interrupting his career to serve as a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, Williams missed some 800 potential games (five seasons) which may have allowed him to dwarf numbers posted by Babe Ruth.

According to the publisher, “Drawing on extensive interviews with those closest to Williams, Leigh Montville presents the definitive chronicle of a classic American life. With passion and precision, Montville conjures equally the powerful grace of Williams’s legendary swing and his cultural aura of invincibility. He re-creates Williams’ notorious public persona and opens a window into a simple, unsophisticated man whose greatest passions were hitting baseballs and going fishing.”

I Call the Shots: Straight Talk about the Game of Golf Today (©2004 by Johnny Miller with Guy Yocom, published by Penguin USA, 268 pages, $26) – People always talk about Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player when reveling in golf from the 1970s and 1980s, but Johnny Miller had a brilliant career as well – including winning the U.S. and British Opens – and now is a respected television analyst.

He brings his insights to I Call The Shots and takes a look at thinks like “Smackdown” golf (a decline in golf etiquette and manners), how long courses are driving everyday hackers away from the game, the top 10 courses he has played, Tiger Woods’ persona, the role of teaching “gurus” and how they may hurt players more than help them, and more.

Caddy for Life: The Bruce Edwards Story (©2004 by John Feinstein and Bruce Edwards, published by Little, Brown & Company, 320 pages, $25.95) – The inspirational story of caddy Bruce Edwards and his battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease is brought to life by popular sportswriter John Feinstein.

Despite battling the disease, Edwards continued to work with the wonderful support of his friend, Tom Watson. Edwards died on April 8, the opening day of the 2004 Masters at Augusta National in Georgia.

According to the publisher, “Beyond golf’s polished surface, there lies a world not often seen by the average fan. The caddy sees everything – the ambition, the strategy, the rivalries, the jealousies – that occurs behind the scenes. And now, for the first time, along with America’s favorite sportswriter, one of golf’s legendary caddies will reveal the secrets behind the most popular sport of our time.”

There had never been anything very typical about Bruce as a caddy. His relationship with Watson had been built on many things, not the least of which was his willingness to disagree with his boss, even challenge him on occasion. Watson had enough self-confidence that he didn’t mind being told he was wrong. The two of them argued often but almost never really fought. Bruce always gave most of the credit for that relationship to Watson.

“He let me be wrong,” he said. “I never said anything thinking that if I was wrong, I’d get fired or yelled at. Sometimes he listened to me, sometimes he didn’t. But once he made his decision, he always took responsibility for the outcome.”

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (©2004 by Michael Lewis, published by Norton, W.W. & Company, paperback, 316 pages, $13.95) – As smart as Oakland Athletics general manager claims to be in this book, why haven’t the A’s won a World Series championship since 1989?

Sure, Beane likes to point out that the A’s – a major league team with a minor league payroll (spending one dollar to every three dollars the New York Yankees spend) – have one of the best records in baseball over the last several years. Who cares? Did the A’s beat the Yankees in that dramatic playoff series a few years ago? No.

According to the dust jacket, Beane is “putting into practice on the field revolutionary principles garnered from geek statisticians and college professors. Michael Lewis’ brilliant, irreverent reporting takes us from the dugouts and locker rooms (where coaches and players struggle to unlearn most of what they know about pitching and hitting) to the boardrooms (where we meet owners who begin to look like fools at the poker table, spending enormous sums without a clue what they are doing).

Until the A’s win a World Series title, Billy Beane should just shut up. When the Boston Red Sox nearly lured him away, Beane claims he stayed behind out of loyalty but a lot of people suspect he didn’t want to be seen as a hypocrite by going to a big market team.

Still, Moneyball is an interesting look at baseball … and how one man perceives it.

My Prison Without Bars (©2004 by Pete Rose and Rick Hill, publisher by Rodale Press, 288 pages, $24.95) – There is no argument that Pete Rose, gambling or no gambling, belongs in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

There are a lot of bad guys in the Hall of Fame. Rose would be just one more. Even though his off-field problems certainly tarnished the image of baseball, no one could question his desire or ability as a player and the man who has the most career hits in the history of baseball certainly deserves his spot in the Hall.

Like Beane, though, he should just shut up.

But Rose – a lifelong gambler and sufferer of oppositional defiant disorder – continues to try and appeal to the fans who loved him throughout his 24-year career … like those who were outraged by the public lynching instituted by reporter Jim Gray on national television.

Rose tells what life was like behind bars and talks about his exile while painting a picture of his baseball career. He also confronts his demons … tackling the ugly truths about his gambling and his behavior.

Is he contrite about his problems? Read My Prison Without Bars and see.

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It (©2004 by Neal Bascomb, published by Houghton Mifflin, 336 pages, $24) – The four minute mile used to be the Holy Grail of running, but now it’s just a target.

Back in the 1950s, Roger Bannister, John Landy and West Santee set out to break that magical barrier and Bascomb chronicles their efforts here. He shows Bannister as a man driven by the nobility of breaking the barrier, Landy who saw it as a spiritual quest, and Santee who simply thought he was better than everyone else.

According to the dust jacket, “Santee was the first to throw down the gauntlet in what would become a three-way race of body, heart, and soul. Each young man endured thousands of hours of training, bore the weight of his nation’s expectations on his shoulders, and still dared to push to the very limit..”

Who would be the first to achieve the unachievable?

Read The Perfect Mile and find out.

Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion’s World Series of Poker (©2004 by James McManus, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 436 pages, paperback, $15) – With poker somehow finding its way onto ESPN and packaged as a legitimate sport (or, at the very least, a sporting competition of sorts) then why not learn a little bit more about the so-called World Series of Poker?

Positively Fifth Street is a look at the World Series of Poker and peripheral events like the murder of Ted Binion, the host of the tournament who was supposedly killed by a stripper and her boyfriend. This is not an outsiders look at poker, but rather an insider’s as McManus enters the fray with his advance from Harper’s Magazine. Instead of an expose, Positively Fifth Street almost comes off as an adventure story.

The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching (©2004 by Dean Smith with Gerald D. Bell and John Kilgo, published by Penguin, 337 pages, $24.95) – Except for John Wooden, there is perhaps no more legendary college basketball coach than Dean Smith. And in The Carolina Way, Smith details his program for building and maintaining winning teams in sports, business and life.

Smith coached greats like Michael Jordan and Kenny Smith and inspired the early success or coach George Karl, but he also saw more than 96 percent of his players earn their undergraduate degrees and more than 33 percent earn graduate or professional degrees.

Smith believed there was a lot more to college than basketball and finding a way to the NBA. Read all about his Play Hard, Play Smart, Play Together philosophy.