This book changed my mind. Larry was from where I was from. He was country before country was cool. That and his dad shot himself in the face with a shotgun. That shocked me. He ditched Indiana, went to the Valley and took the Sycamores all the way to the National Championship game. Also, he was one of the cockiest dudes alive. You know you're good when you have half the world fooled you're the Hick from French Lick, but you have 10 times the swagger of Magic Johnson.

3) The Jordan Rules - by Sam Smith

One summer day while my parents were away, my best friend and I took all the old sports magazines lying around the house, cut out all the Jordan pictures and taped them to the cinder block walls in our basement. We then took duct tape to the floors and taped out a lane on the floor, complete with a huge number 23 in the middle. You could say I was a bit of a Jordan fan.

This book was the first chink in the armor. The first chapter opened with Jordan ripping on Will Perdue. (Interesting glimpse into MJ's sense of humor: Jordan would call Perdue "Will Vanderbilt" saying that Will wasn't worthy of a Big Ten name. Is that funny, or just mean? I'm not sure.) Smith's portrayal painted Jordan as a jerk, a cocky ball-hog who was unwilling to share the limelight. (An interesting notion when you consider Jordan didn't start winning championships until he relinquished some control.) The book taught me some important lessons in hero-worship, but not until much later. When I was 12 I pretty much denied all of it. Even though I would never go on to become a professional athlete, I knew you couldn't trust the media.

2) Friday Night Lights - by H.G. Bissinger

I never owned this book in hardcover, but I distinctly recall being one of the first to read it in my school. Eventually 75% of our football team would read it, including the coaching staff, based on my incessant praise. (I was the Boobie Appleseed of Friday Night Lights, tossing out quotes from the book here and there, watching them grow in my peers' minds.)

Reading the book as an adult, I realized it wasn't perfect. I felt Bissinger leaned a little too hard on the race angle, but what do I know, I wasn't living in Odessa in 1988. But as a young lad it had everything I needed...high school football. It wasn't the high school football I was playing, no planes or Astroturf or big-wig boosters with bottomless, petroleum-lined pockets, but we did share the Friday night lights. That was the beauty of this book, even though the hook was to show how exaggerated and disproportionate football was in west Texas, there was still the universal appeal of the idea that the same thing, on much different scales, happened every fall Friday across America.

It even made an enjoyable movie. I know Lights the film edition is pretty flawed, but I enjoy it every time I see it. If only they had paid a little more attention to the details. Kids weren't wearing Nike's with spat straps and Oakley visors in 1988!

1) Fab Five - by Mitch Albom

There was much hand-wringing on my part between numbers 1 and 2. FNL was undoubtedly a better book, and we cannot discount the fact that Mr. Albom went on to write Tuesday's with Morrie and became a major league sap. But the deciding factor was Christmas of 1993, when I received the book as a gift, read it within three days, then read it again.

I loved the story of those five cocksure freshmen showing up in Ann Arbor, humiliating the upperclassmen in preseason workouts, then taking the Wolverines to two straight Final Fours. The face of basketball changed forever in that first year of the Fab Five and this was the book chronicling it all. By the time the Chris Webber-TO game against North Carolina rolled around, I, like the rest of the hoops playing world, was wearing long-ass Michigan shorts, black socks and the very first Nike Air Max basketball shoe...and I always rooted for the Heels as a kid! (I did, however, have Eric Montross's haircut, so I guess all but my head was on the bandwagon.)

And who knew that 12 years later the sartorial sense of those five freshmen in Michigan would still echo through the halls of hoopdom? The seeds for this year's ridiculous controversy over the NBA dress code were sown back with Jalen, Jimmy, Chris, Juwan and Ray. (Which for them, is a good thing because it may be the biggest impact they'll have on the league this year.)

So that's the list for now. I'll let you know where Ball Four finishes when I finish, but in the meantime, feel free to write in and tell me about your favorite sports book. If you do, I'll reward you with a Book It sticker and certificate for a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut.*

* This offer expired in 1989.

Discarded Titles: Tuesdays with Webber...the Rise and Fall of Mitch Albom, Read Herren, Jordan versus Bird...the Autobiography Wars.