Father’s Day Sports Books Gift Guide for 2025

Is the dad in your house a sports lover? Can he recall who won the World Series in 1995 and why Andruw Jones was crucial in deciding the winner that postseason? Does he know why John Elway is famous for his 2-minute drills? If so, then these three books from popular authors may make excellent gifts this Father’s Day.

Read on to see the suggestions from AJT sportswriter David Ostrowsky:

The Ancient Eight: College Football’s Ivy League and the Game They Play Today

By John Feinstein (Hachette Books)

There was once a time in college football history, long before the modern-day titans of the SEC roamed the earth, when the Ivy League reigned supreme. As those who have visited the College Football Hall of Fame may be aware, Princeton played in the very first college football game against Rutgers in 1869 and in the ensuing decades Harvard and Yale would take turns hoisting the championship trophy.

In “The Ancient Eight,” the late prolific Jewish author John Feinstein doesn’t chronicle the truly ancient history of Ivy League football — as one would surmise from the title — but focuses nearly exclusively on how the games played out among the old-timey programs during autumn 2023. With Feinstein’s deft storytelling and exhaustive reporting, this recent season serves as a microcosm for how some of the country’s elite academic institutions maintain competitive football programs well into the twenty-first century while weathering the novel development of the transfer portal and the temptation for elite players to leave school early for the NFL.

Though the minutiae of game-by-game events figures prominently in “The Ancient Eight” — of the many exemplary scholar-athletes profiled, former UPenn defensive lineman Joey Slackman, recipient of the 2023 Dolph Schayes Outstanding Jewish Athlete of the Year award, has a fascinating backstory as he actually arrived at school to wrestle—there’s also a compelling human-interest narrative weaved into the retelling of the 2023 Ivy League football season.

Tragically, one of the league’s longest-tenured and most highly esteemed head coaches, Buddy Teevens of Dartmouth, was the victim of a March 2023 bike accident, the injuries of which he ultimately succumbed to the following September. How Dartmouth soldiers on to compete with heavyweights Harvard and Yale for an Ivy League title that fall makes for a gripping storyline. Meanwhile, Harvard’s recently retired head coach, Tim Murphy, who’s quoted at length here, was a dear friend of Teevens and as Feinstein demonstrates in vivid detail, the accident and gruesome aftermath took quite a toll on the iconic Crimson coach.

Sadly, “The Ancient Eight” will be Feinstein’s last book as the legacy author, whose magnum opus, “A Season on the Brink,” remains one of the all-time most heralded sports books, passed away this past March at age 69. But grounded in 82 forthright interviews conducted over months of behind-the-scenes research across all eight Ivy League campuses, “The Ancient Eight” serves as a fitting coda to Feinstein’s long trail of literary masterpieces.

Larry Doby in Black and White: The Story of a Baseball Pioneer

By Jerry Izenberg (Sports Publishing)

Understandably, the courageous path Jackie Robinson blazed to the majors has been thoroughly chronicled in books, articles, and documentaries. However, far less is known about the extreme trials and tribulations that Hall of Famer Larry Doby went through when he broke the American League color barrier months after Robinson made history in the National League for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In “Larry Doby in Black and White,” a long overdue biography of the Cleveland Indians’ seven-time All-Star who sparkplugged the franchise’s last World Series title in 1948, author Jerry Izenberg illustrates how Doby’s road to the big leagues was just as treacherous as Robinson’s.

Izenberg, the 94-year-old sportswriter who has penned articles for The Star-Ledger for well over a half-century, enjoyed a close friendship with Doby before the Hall of Fame ballplayer passed in 2003. Undoubtedly, the succession of personal anecdotes as well as insight gleaned from personal interviews with Doby’s relatives turn this biography into an important contribution to the rich canon of baseball literature.

There also happens to be a fairly strong Jewish element to Doby’s life story. As a teenager, Doby’s family moved from Camden, South Carolina, to settle in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Paterson, New Jersey. It was in the more progressive Carroll Street neighborhood where Doby befriended Joe Taub, a first-generation Jewish boy from Polish immigrants who would one day make a fortune as founder of the payroll-management company ADP before becoming a part-owner of the New Jersey Nets.

Years later, when Doby faced a constant barrage of racist vitriol while breaking in with the Indians—even most of his teammates refused to introduce themselves the first time he walked into the locker room—another influential Jewish figure, Hank Greenberg, then an Indians executive, went out of his way to befriend the lonely rookie. Meanwhile, during Doby’s prime years in the mid-1950s, a decade after his World War II Naval service, he was regularly representing Cleveland at All-Star Games alongside Al Rosen, one of the greatest Jewish third basemen of all time.

Though “Larry Doby in Black and White” doesn’t follow the traditional biography playbook of telling Doby’s story in strictly chronological order, Izenberg beautifully enlightens readers about the noble life of one of America’s most overlooked sports heroes.

Dewey: Behind the Gold Glove

By Dwight Evans with Erik Sherman (Triumph Books)

For nearly two decades, Boston Red Sox right fielder Dwight Evans was one of baseball’s finest outfielders, winning eight Gold Glove Awards, while putting up borderline Hall of Fame offensive numbers. But unbeknownst to even the most die-hard baseball fans, the player affectionately known as “Dewey” was battling personal demons when he returned home from the ballpark. And as the wildly popular Evans shares in his new autobiography, “Dewey: Behind the Gold Glove,” co-authored with estimable baseball historian Erik Sherman, such challenges were far graver than getting around on a Nolan Ryan fastball or snagging a scorching line drive off the bat of Dave Winfield.

In “Dewey: Behind the Gold Glove,” the man who had the most home runs of any American League batter in the 1980s provides a heart-wrenching account of how he and his wife Susan supported their two sons, Timothy and Justin, who battled neurofibromatosis (NF), a genetic condition in which tumors develop in the brain, spinal cord, and nerves and one that ultimately ended their lives at a young age.

“One of my challenges then as a professional ballplayer was to try my best to compartmentalize my family life and my baseball life,” Evans recalls about Boston’s American League pennant-winning 1975 season when Timothy had just had his first surgery for NF when he was two years old. “It’s hard to be confident when deeply upsetting things are going on in your life. I was confused and didn’t really know what was going on. I kind of wish I had some therapy to go to or something that could have helped me out.” Indeed, Evans’ plight reminds sports fans that pro athletes, while supernaturally gifted at their respective craft, are not immune from hardship and tragedy.

Yet for all Evans suffered away from Fenway Park — and for one final season, Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium — the mustachioed slugger with a cannon for a right-field arm was an indispensable member of Red Sox lineups that muscled their way to the World Series in 1975 and ’86. Though Boston fell short in both editions of the Fall Classic, they will forever remain unforgettable chapters in New England sports history; Evans, to his credit, doesn’t shy away from reliving both the ecstasy and heartbreak of those historic postseasons.

Regardless of your rooting interest, after reading “Dewey,” it’s hard not to have immense respect and compassion for a man who displayed such enduring strength and character, whether he was in his children’s doctors’ offices or Fenway’s cavernous right field.