Booking Through Thursday--Gold Medal Reading

Here's this week's Booking Through Thursday question:

You, um, may have noticed that the Olympics are going on right now, so that’s the genesis of this week’s question, in two parts:

First:

• Do you or have you ever read books about the Olympics? About sports in general?
• Fictional ones? Or non-fiction? Or both?

And, Second:

• Do you consider yourself a sports fan?
• Because, of course, if you’re a rabid fan and read about sports constantly, there’s a logic there; if you hate sports and never read anything sports-related, that, too … but you don’t have to love sports to enjoy a good sports story.
• (Or a good sports movie, for that matter. Feel free to expand this into a discussion about “Friday Night Lights” or “The Natural” or whatever…)

And here's my answer: I've never read anything about the Olympics, though I am enjoying watching them, as usual. I tend not to read sports books at all, unless the sport element is incidental. For example, I just finished and enjoyed Joseph O'Neill's novel Netherland, which is sort of about the world of cricket, though fortunately, he does not spend much time describing the actual game play.

I'm not a sports fan, but I come from a family of sports fans. I enjoy playing some sports, but not the team variety. I haven't read many books with sports in them, but I've enjoyed many movies with a sports setting, like "The Natural", which was mentioned above. I also loved "Bull Durham", which I just watched again recently. Baseball seems to have a lot of quirky atmosphere that lends itself to movie storytelling, at least.  A good friend of mine wrote a fun baseball movie called "Little Big League", which is very entertaining, too.  He's kind of a renaissance guy, my friend Greg, as he is a fiction writer, poet, and also a blogger--check out his poetry and other great stuff at Gotta Book.

As far as other sports go, I'm sure there must be some good books out there in a sports setting.  Do you have any recommendations?