SPORTS BOOKS/The Best of 2002: Keith Duggan sifts through the sports books of 2002 and picks the five best Irish and five best foreign publications. He also looks at some of the other tomes sitting on the bookshelves

1. The Best American Sports Writing 2002. Edited by Rick Reilly (Houghton Mifflin € 20.00 approx)

The jockstrap equivalent of its Best American Short Stories/Essays brethren, this series is always of high quality and generally contains two or three truly brilliant pieces. Despite - or perhaps because of this - the ever-uninspired sports sections in Irish bookstores fail to stock it. But it is worth the effort of purchase through Amazon.com or by getting in touch with the SportsPages bookshop in London.

Given that this year's guest editor is Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated's chirpy star columnist, it is surprising that the selection is quite dark. It also continues the recent trend of covering more off-beat material. Among the pieces included here is the harrowing account of a young Spanish matador's brush with death, and Backyard Bloodbath, a staggering portrayal of the cult of extreme wrestling, complete with wrestling mats with metal tacks and barbed-wire baseball bats.

There are also contributions from the deans of the American scene, such as

Rick Telander and Frank Deford and, as always, there is great variety in length and tone.

The out-of-the-blue material is a consequence of the bland, corporate reality of the trinity of professional sports, with fewer pieces from the NFL, NBA and NHL than would have been the case a few years ago. Because sport is such an all-consuming part of American life, these essays and features offer a worthwhile perspective on the contemporary state of mind there.

It will be well worth the small effort it takes to lay your hands on this book.

2. In Black and White - The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jessie Owens. By Donald McRae (Simon and Schuster € 30.00)

Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award, this labour of love chronicles the trials and friendship of two men who blazed a trail for African- American athletes.

Both played a significant role in undermining the myth of white supremacy, Owens by winning four gold medals under Adolf Hitler's nose at the 1936 Olympics and Louis by beating German wrecking ball Max Schmelling on his way to becoming one of boxing's all-time greats.

While McRae's depictions of their athletic feats are dramatically reconstructed, it is the dignity in their friendship and their legacy that sings through in a really distinguished book in which sport, really, is just a backdrop.

3. Jack&Bobby: A story of brothers in conflict - Leo McKinstry (Collins Willow €28.40)

A spare and riveting portrayal of England's famous football family, this thorough and clearly presented account reads at times like an elegy for working class England.

The Charlton story is one of the most important in the rich history of English soccer and McKinstry has shaped it at the right time, when the brothers are essentially at rest. Their differing personalities - Jack bull-headed and affectionate and noisy, Bobby contemplative and shy and distant - led to their increasing estrangement in later life.

But the reconstruction of their glory years is remarkably told and the book is as much about Cissie Charlton as it is about her sons.

Brilliant on the devastating effect that the Munich disaster had on Bobby's world view and slyly funny about Jack's many idiosyncrasies inspired by his thrift, the book traces the brothers' early football days in Ashington through to the present day.

For all their greatness, they had few airs and graces, as did their team-mates, and while McKinstry never once compares the contemporary soccer landscape to that of the Charlton era, it is evident that in those years the game was richer and plainer and more important than today's synthetic product.

McKinstry also takes care to put in context the importance of women in both of the Charltons' lives, from Cissie through to their wives. Asked why the Charltons' marriages were so strong, Jack came up with the memorable observation that "Geordies don't get divorces."

4. The Greatest Game Ever Played. Mark Frost (Little Brown €28.05)

An intimate and lovingly crafted visitation to the 1913 US Open in Brookline. The common myth is that the epic tournament struggle between local boy Francis Ouimet and the peerless Harry Vardon effectively popularised golf.

Frost uses the background of his two stars to great effect, tracing their lives up to and beyond the moment of their fated meeting. It is typically American in style in that it ignores all rules, part social history and part novel, with actual passages of invented dialogue that readers will either love or hate.

Yet again, golf has provided another classic sports tale and while the book is there to be enjoyed, the potential for a Kevin Costner movie is also there to be feared.

Given the cosmic profile golf has undergone in the Tiger Woods era, Frost's story is a nice reminder of its origins and history and the etiquette that seemed so bankrupt at Brookline in 1999.

5. Tim Parks: A Season With Verona (Secker and Warburg € 26.85)

Part travelogue, part intimate soul search, Parks chronicles the time he spent travelling around Italy with Verona's hardcore brigade for another season on the brink.

He is at once quite addicted to the company and experiences and utterly mystified as to why this is so because much of what goes on is alien to his genteel, Oxbridge-educated sensibility. Halfway through the book, he finds himself ruminating about why he loves a Verona fans' song celebrating the work of Stavanin who, it turns out, was a serial killer who stalked northern Italy a few years earlier. Cheerful stuff.

Elsewhere, he sits in a bus as his travelling pals, male and female, jeer and humiliate a female police officer for her weight.

Parks, to his credit, never attempts to distance himself from such unpleasantness or to justify his presence other than his increasing fixation with the fortunes of the lack-lustre Verona team.

Overall, it gives a compelling insight into the dark fanaticism that governs the Italians' relationship with their club and the merciless cruelty with which weaker players or fading idols are treated.