The Year's Top 10 Sports Books

By Budd Bailey

It was a busy year in the sports book business for me. Heck, I even wrote one. Hope it popped up under your tree. I read many others along the way in 2025.

As usual, I have my favorites from the year – and it’s time to go over the annual list. They all came out in 2025 or will be published in 2026. I received an advance copy of “Heartland,” so I read it in 2025 while it won’t be in the bookstores until 2026. Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

Here’s the top 10; you can find full reviews of these books on my blog at allsportsbooks.blogspot.com:

American Coach – Ivan Maisel – The talented writer shines a line on a great college football coach who left the job early. There was pressure to win even back in the 1950s in South Bend - just like there is now. This fills in a nice historical gap in the sport’s history.

The American Game – S.L. Price – You can count on Price to come up with quality material, and he strikes again here with a look at the sport of lacrosse. The dynamics are quite complicated, in part of because of the connections with Native communities – who merely invented the game.

American Kings – Seth Wickersham – This is billed as a biography of the football quarterback. That’s not exactly helpful, but go read it anyway. It’s filled with insights from QBs past and present, and how they came to fill the most important position in American sports.

Baddest Man – Mark Kriegel – Here’s the latest offering from someone who specializes in fine biographies, such as Joe Namath and Pete Maravich. Mike Tyson is a better story than you might think he is, and he seems to have come out of it all reasonably well – much to our surprise.

Every Day is Sunday – Ken Belson – The New York Times writer tells what he’s learned over the years while covering the National Football League’s business side. The story isn’t quite as interesting as what happens on the field, but the relationship between the two sides of that coin becomes less mysterious after reading this.

The Front Runner – Brendan O’Meara – Track and field has never seen anyone like Steve Prefontaine. He was a major sports celebrity for a while. Prefontaine was filled with talent and charisma, making a huge impact in a too-short life. Think James Dean, and you’ll get the comparison.

Heartland – Keith O’Brien – A book about Larry Bird’s stay at Indiana State reads something like fiction now. Larry Bird? At Indiana State? No, it wouldn’t happen today – at least for more than a year. O’Brien dug deep into the story and found all sort of fascinating details to a magical year of basketball.

The Last of His Kind – Andy McCullough – We’ve probably seen the last of Clayton Kershaw, the future Hall of Fame pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He’ll be going out a winner, thanks to the Dodgers’ win in the World Series. Even Blue Jays fans will enjoy this close-up at one of the greatest pitchers of his generation.

The Long Run - Martin Dugard - The so-called Running Boom of the 1970s (and to some extent the 1980s) has been covered in books before, but probably not as well as in the way Martin Dugard does it in this so-called "biography of the marathon." There is plenty of new information here that keeps the pages turning.

Skipper – Scott Miller – It’s not easy to be a baseball manager these days, and the job is becoming more difficult all the time. Miller’s look at the job is first-rate. Adding poignancy to the story is that Miller died shortly after completing it. It’s a shame we won’t be reading more from him.

(Follow Budd on X.com via @WDX2BB)