Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman on a truck bound for the slaughterhouse. The recent Dutch immigrant recognized the spark in the eye of the beaten-up nag and bought him for eighty dollars. On Harry’s modest farm on Long Island, he ultimately taught Snowman how to fly. Here is the dramatic and inspiring rise to stardom of an unlikely duo. One show at a time, against extraordinary odds and some of the most expensive thoroughbreds alive, the pair climbed to the very top of the sport of show jumping. Their story captured the heart of Cold War–era America—a story of unstoppable hope, inconceivable dreams, and the chance to have it all. They were the longest of all longshots—and their win was the stuff of legend.
Buy this wonderful story today for only $1.99 - a great price as this book is normally $11.99.
For years, many of Sports Illustrated’s 21 million readers turned first to the magazine’s last page, because that’s where they find SI’s most popular feature: the Life of Reilly column, written by best-selling author Rick Reilly.
A 22-year veteran of Sports Illustrated and a 10-time National Sportswriter of the Year, Reilly took over SI’s back page in 1998, and his column immediately attracted a devoted following, including the legions of fans who helped make his first collection, The Life of Reilly, a New York Times best seller in 2000.
Now comes Hate Mail from Cheerleaders, 100 of Reilly’s favorites, along with a new foreword and column postscripts by the author. Alternately sidesplitting and heartwarming but always opinionated and provocative, these pieces are the best work by the best columnist in the business.
Read this sports book on your Kindle when you buy it today for $2.99.
Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL football star and volunteer coach for the Gilman high school football team, teaches his players the keys to successful defense: penetrate, pursue, punish, love. Love? A former captain of the Baltimore Colts and now an ordained minister, Ehrmann is serious
about the game of football but even more serious about the purpose of life. Season of Life is his inspirational story as told by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jeffrey Marx, who was a ballboy for the Colts when he first met Ehrmann.
Ehrmann now devotes his life to teaching young men a whole new meaning of masculinity. He teaches the boys at Gilman the precepts of his Building Men for Others program: Being a man means emphasizing relationships and having a cause bigger than yourself. It means accepting responsibility and leading courageously. It means that empathy, integrity, and living a life of service to others are more important than points on a scoreboard.
Season of Life is a book about what it means to be a man of substance and impact. It is a moving story that will resonate with athletes, coaches, parents — anyone struggling to make the right choices in life. This sports story is published by Simon and Schuster and is selling for $2.99 today.
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Free now: Two non-fiction books – military history and golf/sports biography
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Few people in the history of college sports have been more influential or had a bigger impact than Lou Holtz. Winner of the three national Coach of the Year honors, the only coach ever to lead six different schools to season-ending bowl games, and the ninth-winningest coach in college football history, Holtz is still teaching and coaching, although
he is no longer on the gridiron.
In his most telling work to date, the man still known as “Coach” by all who cross his path reveals what motivated a rail-thin 135-pound kid with marginal academic credentials and a pronounced speech impediment to play and coach college football, and to become one of the most sought-after motivational speakers in history. With unflinching honesty and his trademark dry wit, Holtz goes deep, giving us the intimate details of the people who shaped his life and the decisions he would make that shaped the lives of so many others.
His is a storied career, and Holtz provides a frank and inside look at the challenges he overcame to turn around the programs at William and Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas, and Minnesota. From growing up in East Liverpool, Ohio, to his early days as a graduate assistant at the University of Iowa, to his national championship runs at Notre Dame and his final seasons on the sidelines in South Carolina, Lou Holtz gives his best, a poignant, funny, and instructive look into a life well lived.
You can read Coach Holtz autobiography on your Kindle today when you buy it for only $1.99.
April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first black man to break into major-league baseball in the twentieth century. World War II had just ended. Democracy had triumphed. Now Americans were beginning to press for justice on the home front — and Robinson had a chance to lead the way.
He was an unlikely hero. He had little experience in organized 
baseball. His swing was far from graceful. And he was assigned to play first base, a position he had never tried before that season. But the biggest concern was his temper. Robinson was an angry man who played an aggressive style of ball. In order to succeed he would have to control himself in the face of what promised to be a brutal assault by opponents of integration.
In Opening Day, Jonathan Eig tells the true story behind the national pastime’s most sacred myth. Along the way he offers new insights into events of sixty years ago and punctures some familiar legends. Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor. Opening Day brings to life baseball’s ultimate story. You can purchase this sports biography today for only $2.99.
If baseball is America’s national religion, then the Hall of Fame is its High Church. Being named among its 286 inductees makes you the closest thing our country has to an undisputed hero – even a secular saint. But the men in the Hall of Fame are no angels. Among their number are gamblers, drunks, race-baiters, at least one murderer, and perhaps the greatest collection of bona fide characters ever to be dignified by an honor of any kind.This is the book the Hall of Fame deserves.
Along with the story of the institution comes a smart, irreverent discussion of some of the great barstool questions of all time (Why did Jim Bunning make the Hall but not Mickey Lolich? How much is it worth to a player’s autograph-signing career to get in? Did Ty Cobb really kill somebody?) and a fresh look at some of the Hall’s most and least admirable characters. Taken in all, it amounts to a shadow history of America’s Game, shown through the prism of its most sacred spot.
Written with a deep love of the game and a hardened skeptic’s eye, this is a book to incite both passionate conversation and a fresh appreciation of baseball as a mirror and catalyst for our nation’s culture. Buy this inside look at the Hall and its members for only $2.51 today.
The joys of commuting by bike attract scores of new converts every year. But as fresh-faced cyclists fill the roads, they also encounter their share of frustrations—careless drivers, wide-flung car doors, zoned-out pedestrians, and aggressive fellow cyclists, to name a few.
In this follow-up to the best-selling Bike Snob, BikeSnobNYC takes on the trials and triumphs of bike commuting with snark, humor, and enthusiasm, asking the question: If we become better commuters, will that make us better people? From the deadly sins of biking to tactics for dealing with cars, pedestrians, and other cyclists, this primer on bike travel is a must-read for cyclists new and seasoned alike. Buy it today for $1.99 – SuperCheap!
Nobody loves baseball more than Joe Morgan. He’s proved it with his hall-of-fame performance on the field and his brilliant color commentary in the broadcast booth. Bob Costas says, “There may not be anyone alive who knows more about baseball than Joe Morgan.
In his playing days, Morgan was a key cog in the Big Red Machine, and he saw the game at its zenith. From his perch in the broadcast booth he watched 
as baseball self-destructed, culminating in the devastating strike of 1994. And in 1998, he saw the game come back with baseball’s electrifying resurgence in the season of McGwire, Sosa, and the Yankees.
But as great as ’98 was, Joe knows that baseball still has a lot of problems. And while baseball may be back, Joe wants the fans, the players, and the owners to know that some serious changes still need to be made. In Long Balls, No Strikes, Morgan draws on three decades’ experience and passion as he dissects what has gone wrong and right for baseball. Some of his insights may seem unorthodox, some will be controversial, but that’s never stopped Joe Morgan before.
You can purchase this book just in time for the first inning of the season for $2.99 today.
When you gave us your opinion of what you would like to see on Daily Cheap Reads, many of you responded that you would welcome posts of books that are great reads at great prices, even if the price exceeds $5.
Baseball’s opening day is just around the corner and we are happy to post Calico Joe by John Grisham. Priced yesterday at $12.99; today the novel is selling for $7.99.
It’s the summer of 1973, and Joe Castle is the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone has ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas, dazzles Chicago Cubs fans as he hits home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shatters all rookie records. Calico Joe quickly becomes the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing New York Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faces Calico Joe, Paul is in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his dad. Then Warren throws a fastball that will change their lives forever.
Buy this great read at the great price of $7.99 today.
Click here to purchase Calico Joe: A Novel
