Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Andre Agassi has written a book with many familiar sports-memoir elements (overbearing father, fancy women, drugs, money, cultural alienation) with an added twist: hatred for his sport, tennis.

“Open: An Autobiography” (Knopf, $28.95) is a vivid portrait of the internal battle faced in some measure by every athlete: the pain of physical torment, the torment of mental pain. Though on the surface this is a story about Grand Slam victories, endorsements, an obsession with image and with winning, mostly it’s a story of pressure and rebellion, plus really horrible hair which was actually a wig.

“I ask myself: You’re going to wear a hairpiece? During tournaments?” Agassi writes about his thinning hair.

“I answer: What choice do I have?”

Every memoir needs a theme, and this one’s is Agassi’s persistent desire to change -- to change his approach, his profession, his life, himself.

“The idea of stagnating, of remaining this Andre for the rest of my life, that’s what I find truly depressing and shameful,’’ he writes. The whole book is a cri de coeur, and this may be one of the few cases where the reader concludes that the examined life is not worth living.

At one point the tormented Agassi says: “I can’t imagine all these people trying to be like Andre Agassi, since I don’t want to be Andre Agassi.’’

In the end, of course, he’s stuck with himself, and so is Steffi Graf. Now they have two children and he has a semblance of stability. What a relief to him -- and to every exhausted reader of his memoir.

‘The Catch’

Sports literature is full of Greatest Plays, Games that Changed the Sport, and Greatest Games Ever. So nobody should be surprised by the publication of Gary Myers’s “The Catch’’ (Crown, $26), which is about a single play said to have changed two dynasties and transformed the National Football League: the pass from Joe Montana to Dwight Clark that allowed the San Francisco 49ers to defeat the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC Championship game on Jan. 10, 1982.

This volume is better written and more artfully structured than a lot of the books in the Greatest genre, and it also has a claim on the truth. “Franchises, careers, lives and dynasties all changed with one play,’’ Myers writes.

When the 49ers completed the Sprint Right Option, as this storied play was called, the 49ers went on the upswing, the Cowboys fell to earth, Bill Walsh was ascribed genius status, Tom Landry would soon reach emeritus status. That’s a big burden for one play from the 6-yard line, but the San Franciscans were down by 6 points and only 58 seconds remained. The Catch changed all that, and more, as this book argues.

‘Outside the Limelight’

There’s nothing perfect about the way men’s basketball is played in the Ivy League, of course, but that doesn’t mean the Ancient Eight hasn’t made a contribution to the game. That’s the point of Kathy Orton’s “Outside the Limelight’’ (Rutgers, $24.95), which bills itself as the first book about Ivy basketball, which might be correct if only John McPhee hadn’t given us “A Sense of Where You Are,’’ his 1965 portrait of Bill Bradley at Princeton, which still reigns as perhaps the greatest college-basketball book ever written.

That said, Orton, a Washington Post sports writer, makes a game effort of illuminating the inside game of a sport that has been remarkably monotonous in its outcome. In the 54 years of formal Ivy League play, Penn or Princeton has won or tied for the championship 46 times, including 19 times in the last 21 years. In the last two years, just for variety, Cornell has won it outright.

“Ivy League basketball is at turns wildly entertaining, utterly exasperating, fiercely competitive, gut-wrenchingly emotional, artistic, and unsightly -- sometimes within the course of a single game,’’ Orton writes. That’s why I probably wasn’t alone in rooting for Cornell in its NCAA tournament first-round appearance last winter. Not that it mattered. Missouri beat the Big Red, 78-59.

(David M. Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: David M. Shribman at dshribman@post-gazette.com.

Last Updated: November 9, 2009 00:01 EST