A list of some of the world’s greatest sports writing.
Other Opening Class reading lists can be found at the bottom of this page.
BOOKS
AFL:
Time and Space: Footy Tactics from Origins to AFL – James Coventry
The Draft and The Draftees – Emma Quayle
From the Outer: Footy Like You’ve Never Heard It – Alicia Sometimes & Nicole Hayes (eds)
Baseball:
Moneyball – Michael Lewis
Basketball:
The Art of a Beautiful Game – Chris Ballard
The Whore of Akron: One Man’s Search for the Soul of LeBron James – Scott Raab
The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever – John Feinstein
Cricket:
On Warne or Uncertain Corridors: Writing on Modern Cricket (or a number of others) – Gideon Haigh
MMA:
Thrown – Kerry Howley
NFL:
Friday Night Lights – Buzz Bissinger
A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-foot-8, 170-pound, 43 year-old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL – Stefan Fatsis
Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile – Nate Jackson
The Blind Side – Michael Lewis
Outdoors:
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster – Jon Krakauer
Born to Run – Christopher McDougall
Soccer:
Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby
Among the Thugs – Bill Buford
A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke – Ronald Reng
Playing the Moldovans at Tennis – Tony Hawks
Tennis:
Open – Andre Agassi
String Theory – David Foster Wallace
Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played – L. Jon Wertheim
General:
The Best American Sports Writing – an annual series, edited by Glenn Stout
The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance – David Epstein
Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played And Games Are Won – Tobias J. Moskowitz & L. Jon Wertheim
Going Deep: 20 Classic Sports Stories – Gary Smith
This is Your Brain on Sports: The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry, and What We Can Learn from the T-Shirt Cannon – L. Jon Wertheim & Sam Sommers
LONGFORM FEATURE ARTICLES
ONLINE / IN THE MEDIA
The Age
Especially for sports writers including Caroline Wilson (AFL), Greg Baum, Timothy Boyle
Sydney Morning Herald
Roy Masters (NRL), Peter Fitzsimons
The Australian
Gideon Haigh (Cricket)
Sports Illustrated
Steve Rushin, L. Jon Werthiem (Tennis and others)
ESPN
Zach Lowe (NBA), Wright Thompson
The Ringer
Almost all of them, but especially Katie Baker
FiveThirtyEight
Kirk Goldsberry (NBA)
ABC
Richard Hinds (Aus)
Other writers to search for:
Tracey Holmes (Aus)
Joe Posnanski (USA)
Other reading lists on Opening Class:
To learn about reading lists on Opening Class, click here
