Phone Survey: What baseball books do you return to most often
About 20 years ago, SABR started a new publication called The SABR Review of Books: A Forum of Baseball Literary Opinions, and was published in 1986. I’m not sure how many of them in total were published, but I own the first five editions, though I’m still working my way through them. Today I’ll be working from the Premiere Issue.
The introduction is written by Paul Adomites, who was the editor of the publication.
“The SABR review is not particularly disciplined or formal. There’s a lot of variety here: from heady opinion to well documented analysis, from academic style dissertations to casual appreciation.”
The mid 80’s in my opinion where the golden age of baseball books, and if you pick up this publication you might agree with me. The Review contains 12 reviews, 4 of the books reviewed are in my opinion among the 10 best baseball books ever published. The original Bill James Historical Abstract, Nine Innings by Dan Okrent, Dollar Sign on the Muscle by Kevin Kerrane, and The Arm Chair Book of Baseball edited by John Thorn. If you don’t own all 4 of these, and your frequent this website your doing yourself a disservice.
Besides book reviews the publication also includes a number of features from a Tour of Yankee Literature by Mark Gallagher, to the Negro League revisited by Jules Tygiel. This entry is going to focus on a feature called “Phone Survey: What baseball books do you return to most often.”
Roger Angell: “The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter, because it opened up a whole era for so many of us. It was an essential sort of work but done with such modesty and elegance. Ritter did a tremendous amount of work researching all of those players, he just presented them to us with such honesty and directness. Its publication was an outstanding event.
Bill James: “It might be Nice Guys Finnish Last with Leo Duroucher and Ed Linn. I like that book a lot. The use of language is extraordinarily good… I find the record of 40 years of baseball controversies and people engrossing. I have a lot of favorite books but that’s one I like to mention because it doesn’t get mentioned often.”
Leonard Koppett: “I liked Bouton’s second book (Ball Five) much better than the first, by the second book he had much more understanding in it, instead of being a wise guy.”
Dan Okrent: “The three volumes of the Fireside set. I go back to them constantly, for the variety and the surprise. I don’t think necessarily any one of the three volumes has the best stuff written in their particular era, but the bizarre range that Einstein brought to the books really makes them special.”
Larry Ritter: “On reflection my favorite is Veeck as in Wreck. The runner up My Baseball Diary by James Ferrell. And number 3 is Donald Honig’s Baseball America.”
There are also responses by such baseball luminaries as Joe Garragiola, Marty Appel, Tony Kubek, Pete Palmer, and Allan Roth.
Mister High Standards
Posted: March 04, 2006 at 08:05 PM |
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Bill James's books; especially the NBJHA. Now, the book that I should return to most often is Koppett's Concise History of Baseball. It doesn't cover everything, but it's a great overview of the games history and it isn't as bulky as Seymour's book(s) (which I should go out and get some day. I have borrowed it from the library and read a little of it.)
That might be all of them or close to all of them. I thought they only did them for one year. I asked Fred Ivor-Campbell once why SABR stopped publishing this series. I forget the answer, unfortunately. It may have been an optional publication for members to buy (as opposed to The National Pastime or the BRJ) and they just weren't selling enough copies, but I don't know for sure.
Koppett's Concise History
James Historical Abstract
All of Angell's books
Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Great Experiment
Putnam team histories
Official Guides
And a few relatively unknown but great books...
Damon Rice's Seasons Past
Brad Snyder's In the Shadow of the Senators
Harold Parrott's The Lords of Baseball
Allen Barra's Clearing the Bases
Second half's about to start---Go Carolina!
I'll second that. What range these books have... you have "How to Play Second Base" by Eddie Collins, "How to Play Third Base" by Pie Traynor, and so forth... plus brilliant poetry by the likes of Nelson Algren ("The Swede is a Hard Guy," based on Joe Jackson's post-1919 testimony) and the best original stuff from BTF homeslice Jack Keefe.
I haven't seen these in years, but as kids' reading decades ago, these were terrific. I'd love to thumb through these as an adult now that Dan Okrent is vouching for them.
Which reminds me of another terrific book, one which SABR reprinted a few years ago---Batting, by F.C. Lane. It consists of (to quote from the introduction) "the essence of thousands of interviews with more than three hundred Major League ball players, collected over a period of fifteen years [1910-1925] by the Editor of the Baseball Magazine."
You can see just by this brief description why it's the most interesting read of any book about hitting, even including the one by Ted Williams. And what makes it even better is that it bridges the gap between the dead ball era and the Babe Ruth era---both Cobb and Ruth are well represented, plus Wagner, Speaker, etc.
Baseball Babylon - Dan Gutman
Red Sox Forever - Ellery Clark
Decline and Fall of the NY Yankees - Jack Mann
Outrageous Good Fortune - Michael Burke
MLB Series - Jack Zanger
Baseball Stars of.... - Ray Robinson
Bloodletters and Badmen - Jay Nash (oops wrong list)
Some of my favorites..
Fiction
Blue Ruin--Brendan Boyds
Great American Novel-Phillip Roth
The Brothers K-David James Duncan
Sometimes You See It Coming--Mark Baker
Bang The Drum Slowly--Mark Harris
Bio/Auto/Diary
Cobb-Al Stumpf
Seasons In Hell-Mike Shropshire
Bronx Zoo-Sparky Lyle
Photographs
Baseball's Golden Age--Conlon
When It Was A Game?--George Brace
Baseball-Walter Iooss/Roger Angell
Say, I could certainly use a copy of this. You don't suppose there's a bookstore in the DC metro area that has a copy, do you?
[I'm long overdue for a trip out to Bethesda to your place, Andy. How close are you to the Metro? I don't drive...]
Baseball Babylon - Dan Gutman
Oh man, now this one I need. I've seen it cited, but I've never seen it nor seen it available.
44mag, Bronx Zoo is phenomenal, and I really need to read Seasons in Hell... and probably everything else off your fiction rack.
Assuming you mean Brendan Boyd, I didn't know he wrote fiction. But his "Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book" (written with Fred Harris) is something I've probably read ten times.
Me too.
I bet I've read that about 80 times. I was thinking of joining an adult league a year or two ago and re-read it three times.
A Whole Different Ballgame by Marvin Miller
Catcher in the Wry by Bob Uecker (simply because it makes me laugh)
Hardball by Bowie Kuhn (same reason)
Best Regards
John
Say, I could certainly use a copy of this. You don't suppose there's a bookstore in the DC metro area that has a copy, do you?
[I'm long overdue for a trip out to Bethesda to your place, Andy. How close are you to the Metro? I don't drive...]
I'm not sure whether we actually have a copy of that book right now, but there are over 30 copies now available on abebooks beginning at $1.00. That's the SABR version, of course, but it's got the same text as the original.
But we do have hundreds of baseball books, guides, magazines, etc., and we're only about a 4 or 5 minute walk (going south towards D.C.) from the Bethesda stop on the red line of the Metro. It's at 4710 Bethesda Avenue, which is just half a block down the hill from the Women's Farmer's Market on Wisconsin Ave. We're open 10 to 6, seven days a week.
Beyond that, I always go back to The Hidden Game of Baseball by Pete Palmer and John Thorn, The Politics of Glory by Bill James (not to mention his book on managers), and most of the books at the top of the page.
There were in fact just the five editions, from 1986 to 1990. Paul Adomites followed it up with The Cooperstown Review in 1993 and 1994.
Some baseball books I return to a lot:
Baseball Before We Knew It, by David Block
Baseball Extra, by Eric C. Caren
The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (2001 edition)
The Unforgettable Season, by G.H. Fleming
The Celebrant (novel), by Eric Rolfe Greenberg
I'll add to the discussion with:
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. By Robert Coover
SABR's The Deadball Stars of the National League and the soon to be released American League companion....
Why Time Begins on Opening Day and The Heart of the Order are on my list. As is The Iowa Baseball Confederacy in fiction.
I guess the books I look at the most are the ones I use writing my blog, so that's the 2001 addition of the Historical Abstract, the Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, Ball Four and the Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book
In terms of books, George Plimpton's Out of my League is fun, WP Kinsella's collection of baseball short-stories Go the Distance and while it isn't, strictly speaking, a baseball book, Phililp Roth's The Great American Novel is a good read
It's my favorite baseball novel. Eric Rolfe Greenberg hasn't really written anything of note since that.
Another great fiction book is the Dixie Association by Donald Hays, I believe. It's about a real wild indy minor league in the south. It came out in the early 80s.
other great books I always go back to.
Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud by Joe Peptione
Ball Four
Five Seasons, which I agree is the best of the Angell books. I especially like the chapter on Steve Blass
All of the Baseball Abstracts, especially 1984 and 1985
The aforementioned Baseball Card, flipping, tading and bubble gum book
Montville's book on Ted Williams
The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball
Every version of Total Baseball, except the most recent one by ESPN, which is a complete and utter disappointment compared to the earlier ones.
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy
and finally, The Glory of their times
Probably because he's gone from outstanding game reporter to gasbag columnist over the past 25 years, and lots of people forget (or never knew) just how good he was when he was on the Orioles beat.
I'm not sure whether this link will work, since it requires a SABR membership or another means of ProQuest access, but it's Boz's writeup of the fourth game of the 1979 Pirates-Orioles World Series, and I still think it's the best bit of game reporting I've ever read.
The Blass profile is one of the greatest articles I've ever read about anything.
Kahn's fiction book -- The Seventh Game, is also very good. And, of course, Kinsella's Shoeless Joe.
Armas Ilmoittaa,
Kiitoksia ajaksi lukeneisuus minun kirjanpidollinen.
Vilpittömästi,
Jalopeura
Bill James: New Historical Abstract, the Politics of Glory
Detroit Tigers: Club and Community 1945-1995, Patrick Harrigan
Past Time, by Jules Tygiel
Einstein's The Baseball Reader
The Heart of the Order, Thomas Boswell,
The Summer Game and Five Seasons, Angell,
Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, Brad Snyder
So far so standard. These are four others I love (fiction) which I haven't seen mentioned. Anyone's thoughts on 'em?
Mark Winegardner, The Veracruz Blues
Philip Roth, The Great American Novel
Paul Quarrington, Home Game
W.P. Kinsella, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy
and what's the one about the obsessive guy and his table baseball league? that's a good one.
That's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover. It seems well-liked here, but I found it damn near unreadable
There's a whole lot of great baseball short stories too, starting with Lardner's "Alibi Ike," Thurber's "You Could Look It Up," and the one I always recommend, Jim Shepard's "Batting Against Castro," found in the collection of the same name.
The Fireside Books have some great ones too. There's one called (IIRC) "The Stolen Watch," supposedly inspired by an indcident in which Leo Durcoher stole Babe Ruth's pocket watch. And there's a fantastic story whose title eludes me, but it was allegedly rejected by Life magazine because the author refused to remove the phrase "titty-high" (as in a "titty-high fastball"). Anyone know what I'm talking about?
Fiction? the Coover book and the Iowa Baseball Confederacy are two I've re-read, and I very rarely re-read fiction.
A couple of my favorites that I didn't see mentioned are by pitchers:
Bill Lee's The Wrong Stuff and Jim Brosnan's The Long Season.
Because the Mets are my favorite NL team, I'm going to hijack this thread. I saw The Last Nine Innings in a bookstore today. I was tempted, but I bought Zimballist's Selig book instead.
Fiction:
The Curious Case of Sidd Finch - George Plimpton (a sort of expansion of his famous SI article)
California Rush - Sherwood Kiraly (it's freaking hilarious)
Nonfiction:
Jays! A Fan's Diary - Jon Caulfield (hard to find, but very well written. It's about the '84 season. Best book ever written about the Jays)
Good Enough to Dream - Roger Angell (Angell buys the Utica Blue Sox and experiences the NY-Penn League pennant race with them)
Moneyball - Michael Lewis (can't believe nobody's mentioned it yet. Say what you want about it, it's a great read)
True, and I haven't read his game stuff, but I love those two books.
Oh, and if we're talking Mets, how can one not mention The Worst Team Money Could Buy?
Argh, I should've included that one. A classic, and well worth a read. Happily, a Uni press reissued it a couple of years ago so it's not too hard to find
One other newer fiction piece I really liked was Sport by Mick Cochrane, local stuff from the U of MN Press.
Roy Blount Jr has a good one named "Five Ives." Not sure where to find it, I saw it in this anthology of very short stories. Seems like it has also become a play.
And if you've never read Victory Faust: The Rube Who Saved McGraw's Giants, by Gabriel Schechter, find yourself a copy...
Not only are these terrific books, but as far as I know, Brosnan is the only ballplayer who actually wrote his own books. The only other major pro athlete I can think of who did this was Bill Bradley. Leonard Schecter did most of the final writing on Ball Four, even though Bouton obviously dictated its content.
Ken Dryden is another example. And among NFL players, Tim Green and Michael Oriard. It's a rare phenomenon.
I was going to make a joke about not knowing that many kinds of ass, but then I googled. It turns out that "12 kinds of ass" is nine times more popular, as a saying, than "11 kinds of ass", and 18 times more popular than "13 kinds of ass", though to be fair, one reviewer thought Kill Bill kicked "between 9 and 13 kinds of ass", so I wasn't sure how to categorize that one.
I Liked You Gotta Have Wa, but it is very dated upon re-reading.
Prophet of the Sandlots
Boys of Summer
Paths of Glory
Ken Dryden is another example. And among NFL players, Tim Green and Michael Oriard. It's a rare phenomenon.
I didn't know about Dryden or Green, but I knew about Oriard. I read his book King Football, and it's so goddamned good I'd almost had a hard time believing that he actually had played in the NFL. Very bad stereotyping on my part.
Peter Gent, ex-Cowboy receiver, wrote North Dallas 40 (good book), The Franchise (meh), and North Dallas After 40 (not so good).
Best baseball books - I've read the covers off of two:
- The Original (and still best) Historical Abstract
- The Umpire Strikes Back by Ron Luciano. One of the funniest books of all-time. Apparently, he made up several of the stories, but so what? Great great read.
Glory of Their Times, Politics of Glory, and Ball Four deserve a mention as well.
Yes, Andy -- check out Oriard's memoir The End of Autumn as well, since you like his cultural histories.
Back to baseball, I still have the 1969 Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia, and I go back to it for several reasons: the way an entire season's worth of teams fits on two facing pages, the detailed batting lines for pitchers, and certain features like pinch-hitting records and pitchers' relief records that are not in B-Ref or later editions (of the Macmillan, at least; dunno about other encyclopedias). Plus I just have very good associations with the old thing.
I go back every day...just to pull the '69 Encyclopedia out of its NASA shield-like box casing...and slide it back in for the wonderous VA-THUMMMP sound it makes!
EAT YER HEART OUT TREDER!
Baseball As I Have Known It by Fred Lieb
The Dixie League can't remember the author
The Lieb book was cool because he talks about firsthand accounts with Wagner, Cobb, Gehrig, and Ruth. Turns out he is kind of a flake (guy believes in the Ouija board!) but still a good read.
The Dixie League is fiction. No depth but an easy read and you can believe it happening.
That and the The Great American Novel by Roth. That was pretty good.
Obviously you haven't been reading the news lately<i>
That's Roger Kahn, BTW.
While I'm here, though... in my original post I recommended Sherwood Kiraly's novel 'California Rush'. And then I started thinking. Why am I the only person I ever see recommending this book? Has nobody else ever read it? It's such a good book. It's extremely funny, it's readable, it's likable, it's full of baseball. Never mind baseball books, it's one of my all-time favourite books, period. Please go out and track down a copy.
Babe: the Legend Comes To Life by Robert Creamer
The Gashouse Gang by Robert E. Hood
It's What You Learn After You Know It All That Counts by Earl Weaver/Berry Steinback
and my all-time fave sports book:
Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story by David Wolf
I thought the Roger Kahn fiction book was his biography of Pete Rose
Tim Green actually writes "novels" now. I'm not surprised he wrote his own book.
Cause...your dead meat.
Andy, maybe you can answer this: What's with all the one-cent books being sold on Amazon? Are these sellers just trying to make a buck off the shipping cost of $3.49? That's about all I can see them making after the actual cost of postage and packaging is factored in. Does Amazon take a share of the S&H;, or just the listed price of the book?
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