Bronx Banter: Belth: Ten Essential Baseball Books

Damn…Bob Bonner’s “Me and Him” is nowhere to be found.

Last month I received an e-mail from Chris Illuminati, the content editor of Phillyburbs.com. He told me he was asking different people for one baseball book that they’d consider essential. I picked “No Cheering From the Press Box,” Jerome Holtzman’s wonderful collection of interviews with old time sports writers, but sent Chris a list of ten essential books just for the fun of it. Shortly after the story ran I thought it’d be fun to ask a group of seamheads—historians, biographers, columnists, beat writers, screenwriters, novelists—for a list of their ten essential baseball books. Not the ten best books or even the ten most essential books just ten essential ones.

I deliberately rigged the question because there are more than just ten essential books in any self-respecting baseball libray. But I was more interested in lists that would reveal the quirks and personal tastes of each individual rather than trying to assemble an authoratative or comprehensive poll.

The top vote getters are interesting—though not particularly surprising—and because the lists are so subjective there are no consensus selections. “Ball Four” and “The Glory of Their Times” and “The Bill James Historical Abstract” were the top picks, though some people distinctly went with the original Historical Abstract while others chose the new one.  Bill James got more votes than any individual writer followed by Roger Angell (the most common difficulty for the contributors seemed to be which Angell compilation to go with).