A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: Sports Server Virtual Bookstore.

Where: https://www.sportserver.com/

The best sports bookstore in my Long Beach neighborhood closed a few years ago, and yes, people are still bitter.

But there are options not involving a long car ride to Hollywood. On line shopping is one.

This site might be viewed as something of a starter course because of its incomplete and often random nature. In the basketball section, how can you explain the inclusion of a 1997 book on the San Antonio Spurs and not of the best-seller “Season on the Brink” or the lack of books by David Halberstam?

Slight improvement is found in the Olympic section with a larger selection and even some obscure tomes, such as: “Their Day in the Sun: Women of the 1932 Olympics.”

One book landed in a strange section. “They Shoot Coaches, Don’t They? UCLA and the NCAA Since John Wooden,” by Mark Heisler, a Times staff writer, was listed under the instruction portion of the basketball section. Unless the book offered suggestions of how to stay out of NCAA trouble, the placement seems a bit odd.

Links are provided to other works by the author. But when clicking on Heisler’s name, up came a book that he didn’t write: “Putt Like the Pros,” a golf book by Dave Pelz. The golf book was the hot pick of the week, retailing for $13.50 but available for $12.95.

A few clicks away, on amazon.com, the book was selling for $11.20.