Sports Humor

Canadian sport is the brunt of many jokes, but Canucks take the jabs in stride and still find the humour in what’s laughable from the ice to the water to the field and the court.

Ageing as a runner is no joke. Paul Tonkinson discovers that in running, as in life, you are gradually overtaken by a stream of young people wearing clothes you couldn't get into and in shoes you don't recognize. He observes that your relationship with running changes – you no longer run as fast as you can, you run as fast as your body can handle, which is slow. So, embrace it. Why not the toughest footrace on earth? The Marathon Des Sables, a week-long, 250 km self-sufficient sweat fest across the Sahara Desert. What could possibly go wrong?

Popular novelist Dan Jenkins is well known in the golf world for his column in Golf Digest. A modern classic among 20th-century sports novels, Dead Solid Perfect is Jenkins' hilarious send-up of professional golfers and the often ludicrous reality of life on the tour.

First published in 1956, The Ascent of Rum Doodle quickly became established as mountaineering classic. As an outrageously funny spoof about the ascent of a 40,000-and-a-half-foot peak, many thought it inspired by the 1953 conquest of Everest. But Bowman had drawn on the flavour and tone of earlier adventures, of Bill Tilman and his 1937 account of the Nandi Devi expedition. The book's central and unforgettable character, Binder, is one of the finest creations in comic literature.

A wonderful, warm novel from a major new American voice. In The Art of Fielding, we see young men who know that their four years on the baseball diamond at Westish College are all that remain of their sporting careers. Only their preternaturally gifted fielder, Henry Skrimshander, seems to have the chance to keep his dream – and theirs, vicariously – alive, until a routine throw goes disastrously off course, and the fates of five people are upended.

Stricken with a lifelong obsession for offshore fishing, Jeff Nichols had been running part-time charters out of Montauk Harbor, once dubbed “the sport fishing capital of the world”, for 10 years with mediocre results. Most of the time, he just brought friends out and considered a trip successful if the customers didn’t stiff him, walk off with his gear, or puke all over him. Then he started a Groupon campaign and became one of the busiest captains in Montauk, sailing twice a day all week long. But unbeknownst to his customers, he was ill-prepared and grossly underqualified.

Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman, John Baal, “The Babe Ruth of the Big House,” who never hit a home run sober. If you’ve never heard of them—or of the homeless baseball team the Ruppert Mundys—it’s because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.

Charley Hunter unearthed the life and career of the greatest player who never lived, and then spent years successfully attempting to bring Beau Stedman's story to light. His actions did not go unnoticed. Now, it is time for Charley to put the whole experience behind him . . . pass the bar, learn the ropes at the new firm, and settle into a promising legal career. But he's been receiving these intriguing notes attached to clipped obituaries that have caught hold of his curiousity.

From the acclaimed PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize-winning author of A Naked Singularity, a shockingly hilarious novel that tackles, with equal aplomb, both America’s most popular sport and its criminal justice system. From Paterson, New Jersey, to Rikers Island to the streets of New York, Sergio de la Pava’s Lost Empress introduces listeners to a cast of characters unlike any other in modern fiction: dreamers and exiles, immigrants and night-shift workers, a lonely pastor and others on the fringes of society - each with their own impact on the fragile universe they navigate.

Fate lends a hand when a stubborn, irreverent tomboy meets a handsome, easygoing guy with a plan. A hot encounter at a wedding lights a flame between the two but sends Bailey running. Can Jake convince her to give him a shot, or will they only have that one night to remember?

Charlie Conroy has scraped together 22 awful seasons of low league baseball, forever hoping to escape his father's shadow. The son of Jackie Conroy, a talented minor leaguer who died tragically young, Charlie has built his career on a willingness to get hit by beanballs, and by having a stepfather who owns his team. When his stepfather also dies, Charlie's mother, Margaret, installs her son as a coach of Jackie's old team, the nearly bankrupt Cape Haddock Coelacanths.

Leinster House had been burned to the ground. All that was left was a smouldering ruin and the blackened remains of an Irish flag. The old man was trying to pin the blame on Brussels, but I knew the actual truth? Unfortunately, Sorcha was too angry with me for having sex with our daughter's Irish teacher to listen. But I had, like, other irons in the—pardon the pun—fire. I'd just become Head Coach of the Ireland rugby team—albeit, women. The country might well have been focked. But very soon, we had everyone believing in fairy tales again.

From the day I was born, I was brought up to believe that Gaelic games were invented for people too stupid to understand the laws of rugby. Little did I know that one day I would become a legend of Kerry football. But then my life has taken a lot of unexpected twists and turns.

Join Matt Granite, the San Francisco Gladiators star high school catcher as he goes on the road to face Johnny Morinda and the Los Angeles Tangelos. This time it will be Matt and his friends Sean and Jack matching wits against the Tangelos and their pea green uniforms on their arch rival’s home turf. It’s all in for the trio as the baseball world still hasn’t recovered from their debut in Row 25 Seat 12.

Matt Granite plays baseball for his High School team and voted as Most Valuable Player. When they win the sectional High School championship, Matt and his friends are taken to watch the San Francisco Gladiators as a reward. Matt has been passed by every major league baseball team, in the amateur draft. Big league clubs avoid high school catchers like the plague...they never work out. Little does Matt know, but his world is about to change forever.

Seventh on Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time, Dan Jenkins' Semi-Tough is a raucous, politically incorrect football spoof starring New York Giants' redneck star Billy Clyde Puckett. As Puckett records the outrageous buildup to his team's Super Bowl clash with cross-town rivals the Jets, his best friend's voluptuous main squeeze puts some knee-buckling moves on him that he finds difficult to dodge.

Parents Behaving Badly is an uproarious, surprising, and poignant satire of American suburbia and youth sports gone wild. Everyone that has ever been involved with youth sports can relate. Kids, coaches, friends, family - everyone knows 'that guy' or 'that mom. The setting is Little League, but the experiences and issues are universal.

Humor is the best part of baseball. To survive a long season, the everyday schedule, and the failure that is inherent in the game people have always needed a good laugh about a ballgame from time to time. The stories in Baseball Humor: A Collection of Stories by Master Storytellers poke good fun at the struggles, ambition, greed, romance, envy, wisdom, and quirks of the players, managers, wives, and fans. Included are “The Pitcher and the Plutocrat” by P G Wodehouse, “Horseshoes” and “Alibi Ike” by Ring Lardner, “The Red-Headed Outfield” and “The Rube” by Zane Gray, and many others.

Barnabas Jack lived a simple life as an ordinary Japanese salaryman. Life was good in his suburban utopia, until he died, of course. Imagine his surprise when he opened his eyes to a middle-aged male goddess who had given him the gift of reincarnation to new worlds. But there was one catch: Whatever killed him the past life is what he became in the next. With this knowledge, Barnabas Jack embarks on a personal journey to die at the hands of a cute girl or a handsome man. But for now, he'll just have to settle with being a car.

Iconic humorist Dan Jenkins bring his matchless sense of hilarity to this riotous send-up of professional golf. Forty-something sportswriter Jack Brannon is bored to tears with the men's tour. So he decides to check out Ginger Clayton, the hot, new franchise babe on the ladies' links. Things get interesting in a hurry, as it becomes clear somebody wants the gorgeous superstar disqualified for good.