Rick Reilly Books In Order

Missing Links

Missing Links is the story of four middle class buddies who live outside of Boston and for years have been 1 utterly obsessed with golf and 2 a regular foursome at Ponkaquoque Municipal Course and Deli, not so fondly known as Ponky, the single worst golf course in America. Just adjacent to these municipal links lies the Mayflower Country Club, the most exclusive private course in all of Boston and a major needle in their collective sides. Frustrated by the Mayflower’s finely manicured greens and snooty members, three of Ponky’s finest and most courageous Two Down, Dannie, and Stick set up a bet: $1,000. 00 apiece, and the first man to somehow finagle his way on to the Mayflower course takes all. Lying, cheating, and forgery are encouraged, to put it mildly, and with the constant heckling and rare aid of Chunkin’ Charlie, Hoover, and Bluto a few more of Ponky’s elite the games begin. One of the three will eventually play the Mayflower’s course, but their friendships and everything else will change as various truths unravel and the old Ponky starts looking like the home they never should have left. Missing Links is a tremendously funny and fun spirited novel about the smaller pleasures in life, and the perfect gift for anyone who is even remotely in love with the game of golf.

Slo-mo!

Growing up in a bizarre cave dwelling cult in Colorado, seven foot, eight inch Maurice ‘Slo Mo’ Finsternick knows nothing about the NBA that is until the day he’s discovered and becomes the hottest sports icon in the country. This uproariously funny satire of pro sports is Rick Reilly at his very best. The bestselling author of the classic Missing Links has delivered again with this dead on tale of ‘Slo Mo’ Finsternick, a genius player with a patented thirty foot hook shot. Eventually, though, Slo Mo begins to move away from his kind, truthful, polite, and self effacing ways and gradually learns to behave like a famous athlete. Can the big man’s innocence survive the charms of the big show?

Shanks for Nothing

The hilarious sequel to Rick Reilly’s beloved bestselling golf novel Missing LinksLife is going pretty well for Raymond Stick Hart. He s happily married to the former Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Club assistant pro, the beauteous Cajun firecracker Dannie, raising his rambunctious son, Charlie, and getting by writing smart mouthed greeting cards for fifty bucks a pop. Best of all, nothing has changed at Ponky, the worst golf course in America. You still have to hook it past the toxic waste dump on No. 1 and under the billboard on No. 8, the fried egg sandwiches are terrible but cheap, and his pal Two Down is always up for a sucker bet. Then, one disaster of a day, Stick s world does a ten car pile up. The cheapskate bast*ard owner of Ponky announces he s retiring to a nudist camp in Florida and selling the club to the Mayflower Club next door, a bastion of blue blood snobbery that plans to pave Ponky over. Worse, its membership includes Stick s hated father. Who promptly drops dead. Just before Stick s pal Two Down loses $12,000 to a golf hustler who turns out to be funded by the Russian mob. Which is about the same time that Hoover, Ponky s worst golfer and the owner of an impressive array of useless golf gadgets purchased with his wife s money, learns she ll cut him off if he doesn t break a hundred in one month. Then a practical joke makes Dannie believe that Stick s been stepping out with the gorgeous new clubhouse girl, the eye popping Kelly, and he s soon living on the forty year old couch in the Ponky clubhouse. Luckily, Stick has a solution to all his problems. He ll qualify for the British Open.

I’d Love to But I Have a Game

David Letterman provides a hilarious foreword to a look at the popular sports announcer’s nearly thirty seasons of broadcasting that includes chapter introductions by, among others, Jerry Seinfeld, Senator Bill Bradley, Bob Costas, and Robert Klein.

The Life of Reilly

Witty, irreverent, opinionated, honest, laugh out loud funny. These are just a few of the adjectives that have been used to describe the writing of Rick Reilly, the eleven time National Sportswriter of the Year, who has entertained the readers of Sports Illustrated for 22 years with his unique perspective on the world of sports and life in general. Now, in The Life of Reilly, Rick has selected over 60 of his finest stories to create a collection that will amuse, inform, and provoke sports fans and non fans alike.

The book is organized around Reilly’s seven Rs: Rants, Raves, Reality, Roots, Rough, Wrecks, and Royalty. There are features on sports greats, rants against high profile athletic programs, tales of golfing glory in and out of the spotlight, reflections on enduring values and the true meaning of sacrifice, and personal stories about the Reilly family trials and tribulations and much more!

Those of you who know Reilly’s work will be pleased to revisit the master; those who don’t will be thrilled to discover an extraordinary talent. This book was a New York Times bestseller in hardcover.

Hate Mail from Cheerleaders

Soon after best selling author Rick Reilly started writing a weekly back page column for Sports Illustrated, he tackled the subject of cheerleading. Reilly wrote: ‘I don’t hate cheerleading just because it’s as safe as porcupine juggling. I hate it because it’s dumb. Cheerleaders have no more impact on the game than the night janitorial staff. Exactly what does a girl get out of cheerleading, anyway, besides a circle skirt and a tight sweater?’ These sentiments didn’t exactly endear him to the pom pom set, who went after the 11 time National Sportswriter of the Year with a vicious letter writing campaign. That’s the story behind the title of Reilly’s latest collection of columns, Hate Mail from Cheerleaders, now releasing as a paperback. Having handpicked 100 of his favorite pieces from the last seven years, Reilly revisits his subjects by adding postscripts to his work. It’s obvious why the book’s first release as a hardcover in the spring of 2007 reached the New York Times bestseller list for eight consecutive weeks: this collection brings together the best work by the best columnist in the business.

The Best American Sports Writing 2002

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. Each year, The Best American Sports Writing, well established as the premier sports anthology, offers a winning combination of fascinating topics and top notch writers. This year, Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly assembles an all star lineup sure to captivate fans of sports and great writing. From baseball to bullfighting, from horse racing to school bus racing, this collection has something for everyone. Reilly has chosen columnists and feature writers, household names and talented unknowns, and most importantly, pieces that delve behind the statistics, examining the people and emotions that make the game.

Who’s Your Caddy?

The funniest and most popular sportswriter in America abandons his desk at Sports Illustrated to caddy for some of the world’s most famous golfers, and some celebrity duffers, recounting it all in this hilarious and revealing look at the world of golf. Who knows a golfer best? Who s with them every minute of every round, hears their muttering, knows whether they cheat? Their caddies, of course. So sportswriter Rick Reilly figured that he could learn a lot about the players and their games by caddying, even though he had absolutely no idea how to do it. Amazingly, some of the best golfers in the world including Jack Nicklaus, David Duval, Tom Lehman, John Daly, Casey Martin, and Jill McGill agreed to let Reilly carry their bags at actual PGA and LPGA Tour events. To round out his portrait of the golfing life, Reilly also caddied at the Masters, persuaded Deepak Chopra and Donald Trump to use him as a caddy, accompanied high rolling golf hustlers in Las Vegas around the course, and carried the bag for a blind golfer. In Who s Your Caddy?, Reilly chronicles his experiences in the same inimitable style that makes his back page column for Sports Illustrated a must read for more than twenty million people every week. From his laugh out loud portrait of Deepak Chopra decomposing on the green, to his portraits of good ol boys who bet $100,000 a round, to his hilarious descriptions of his own ineptitude as a caddy, to his insights into what makes the greats of golf so great, Reilly combines a wicked wit with an expert s eye in a most original and entertaining look at golf. Who s Your Caddy? is the next best thing to a great round of golf. It is sure to delight low handicappers, high handicappers, and everyone in between. From the Hardcover edition.

Sports in Hell

The most popular sports columnist in America puts his life and dignity on the line in search of the most absurd sporting event on the planet. What is the stupidest sport in the world? Not content to pontificate from the sidelines, Rick Reilly set out on a global journey with stops in Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, England, and even a maximum security prison at Angola, Louisiana to discover the answer to this enduring question. From the physically and mentally taxing sport of chess boxing to the psychological battlefield that is the rock paper scissors championship, to the underground world of illegal jart throwing, to several competitions that involve nudity, Reilly, in his valiant quest, subjected himself to both bodily danger and abject humiliation or, in the case of ferret legging, both. These fringe sports offer their participants a chance to earn a few bucks and achieve the eternal glory that is winning even when the victory in question might strike some as pointless, like the ability to sit in an oven hot sauna for the longest time. It’s debatable whether these sports push the body or just human idiocy to the outermost limits, but one thing is for sure: Sports in Hell is laugh out loud hilarious and will deliver plenty of unabashed fun. From the Hardcover edition.