Baseball Book List

From the Clemens discussion below it appears a few here have a good collection of baseball books. I for one would love to see a list of some of the better ones.


KJS

Baseball books can be separated into a few categories. First are the essays. Second, the stat books. Third, the instructionals.

Here's a start of my recommendations. Note that this is off the top of my head, and I'm sure that i'm leaving a load of great books off.


Essays

anything by Roger Angell

Anything by Roger Kahn

Bang the Drum Slowly

Glory of their Times

A Red Smith Reader (not solely baseball, but great, nonetheless)

Ball Four-Jim Bouton

any of the Ron Luciano books

Summer of '49-David Halberstam

Eight Men Out


Stat Books

Bill James seems to have cornered this market

also, the Baseball Encyclopedia


Instructional

The Art of Hitting .300-Charley Lau w/George Brett

The Science of Hitting-Ted Williams

Nolan Ryan's Power Pitchers Bible

if you are interested in analysis as opposed to history or biography, the best books are those from Baseball Prospectus. Plus join SABR and you will get a few books per year as well as research journals.


Pat

A few novels:


William Kinsella, Shoeless Joe

Bernard Malamud, The Natural

Mark Harris, The Southpaw

Harry Stein, Hoopla

Robert Coover, The Universal Baseball Association

Ring Lardner, You Know Me Al


Non-Fiction:


In addition to those mentioned by 2nd,


Halbertam's October 1964

Donald Hall's Fathers Playing Catch with Sons

Tom Boswell's Why Time Begins on Opening Day (my favorite title)

Robert Creamer's bio of Babe Ruth

Richard Ben Cramer's bio of DiMaggio


And, here's a baseball poem written by my friend and colleague, Randy Blasing.


Hardball


After barrel-chested Earl Torgeson

(my father's favorite) & workmanlike

polite Bill Tuttle (my mother's) had vanished

into the bus in the shadows outside

Comiskey Park, I stood asking my idol, Al

Kaline how to connect with the curve balls

I had already seen coming at twelve,

& he answered

shyly, a twenty-one year-old crew cut

blonde "phenom" speaking from experience,

"You have to find


your own way." It happended my way

would mean stealing a page from the curve's book

& winding down--as on a spiral stair--

into the ground along the lines

of the biggest curve imaginable,

which ends up in the dirt. No star, I knew

I'd never rise above the earth,

but sometimes I'd feel light-headed descending

on the spin my English put on each step

I took. In a word, I would make a virtue

of necessity, which, like rules,

freed me to play the game I'd choose.

Not in any particular order:


1) Total Baseball- now the official encyclopedia of major league baseball. I have the latest (7th edition; over 2500 (very thin, poor quality) pages, but loaded with info. including every player's stats. $60 sticker price. Indispensable


2) The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract- James first published a version of this book in 1985. This new edition came out in 2001 and is great, great, great. This story alone is worth (to me) the $45 sticker price:


Joe Gantenbein hit .290 with the Athletics in 1939, then had an off year in 1940 and lost his job. In 1943 he was in uniform, and he happened to run in to Bill Dickey outside a hotel, waving for a taxi.


"Don't I know you"" Dickey asked.


"Sure," said Gantenbein.


"I can't remember your name,", said Dickey, "But we used to pitch you high and outside."


3) The Glory or Their Times by Lawrence S. Ritter: interviews with old-time baseball players, including Rube Marquard, Sam Crawford, Joe Wood, and less old old-timers like Paul Wanter and Hank Greenberg. Maybe the greateset baseball book ever. You can get it pretty cheap in paperback; mine is a Vintage books 1985 edition


4) Veeck as in Wreck: Autobiography of the great Bill Veeck. New edition by University of Chicago Press came out in 2001 in paperback. Veeck was one-of-a kind.


5) The Lords of the Realm by John Helyar: "A penetrating take-no[prisoners loks at the hundred-year history of what's become a billion-dollar machine, a cutthroat industry. . ." (from the jacket blurb). My 1994 hardcover edition is marked $24. Good stuff.


6) The Hidden Game of Baseball by John Thorn & Pete Palmer: Palmer, along with Bill James, invented sabermetrics, the new statistics. This book is out of print, I think (my worn out copy is from 1984).


7) The Hot Stove League by Lee Allen: first published in 1955, a new paperback edition came out in 2000 ($12.95).


/images/glasses.gif Baseball As I Have Known It by Fred Lieb: My Bison Books paperback edition is from 1996. Lieb started as a sportswriter in 1911 and wrote this book in 1977.


9) Baseball: The Early Years, by Harold Seymour. Out of print, I think, but a great history of baseball through 1903.


10) Pitching in a Pinch by Christy Mathewson: Not really written by Mathewson but great insight into the game of the early twentieth century. Mathewson was not just an admirably good player but an admirable human being. My Bison Books edition is from 1994 and was $12(!)


11) Those Damn Yankees by Dean Chadwin: Now available in paperback, a wonderfully written anti-Yankee/Steinbrenner diatribe. I loved it and I'm a Yankee fan. Some truth to go with our beloved mythology of the game.


12) The Natural by Bernard Malamud: Naturally, better than the movie, with a better ending.

how about...my 50 years with the phillies...connie mack???

Andy,


I ran out last weekend and picked up The Glory of Their Times, which I hadn't read. Simply wonderful.


John

Haven't ever seen it, would love to though. I have John McGraw's book, it's just so-so. Ditto for Ty Cobb's autobiography, Al Stump's biography is better and Stump's article about spending some time with Ty Cobb when Cobb was an old man is the best baseball writing I've ever read.

actually conie mack has a bio titled "my 66 years in the big leagues"...and he managed pittsburg briefly...then the philadelhia Athletics,,,not phillies.....i think this is the book i read as a youngster and loved, but i was a little nerdy, but a decent little leaguer...gl...the baseball hall of fame has additional info online...good luck...i am going to reread this book...lol..gl

I haven't read THAT many baseball books, but my favorites are easily Jim Bouton's 'Ball Four', which is probably one of the most hysterically funny books, period (you don't have to be a baseball fan to enjoy it), and George Will's 'Men At Work', which I still think is pretty underrated in the world of baseball books. But I recommend 'Ball Four' to everyone I know.

Liked the poem. Liked your picks, except, I'll have to admit, I don't really get what you liked about cramer's bio of DiMagio. ?


Also, I've never come across a great bio of Satchel Paige, although I liked "Maybe I'll Pitch forever," his as-told-to with John Holway. Anybody know a good Paige bio?

I love what Tommy Leach said about Honus Wagner: "He has those huge shoulders and those bowed legs, and he didn't seem to field balls the way we did. He just ate the ball up with his big hands, like a scoop shovel, and he threw it to first base, you'd see pebbles and dirt and everything else flying over there along with the ball. It was quite a sight! The greatest shortstop ever. The greatest everything ever."

Sooga -


You have never recommended "Ball Four" to me. Is this based on your strong desire to suck any enjoyment from my life?


Thought so /images/smile.gif.


J

Andy,


I was taken by that description, too. I'm not done with the book yet, but the story about Charles Victory Faust was worth the price of the book alone. What a name! BTW, both he and Ted Williams ended their careers with the same ERA.


John