Baseball books. "Recommendations" and "Recommendations?"

I really enjoy reading “Nice Guys Finish Last,” by Leo Durocher, and “The Umpire Strikes Back,” by Ron Luciano and David Fisher. It was interesting to read about Luciano, as there will never be another umpire like him in baseball again.

I would definitely recommend it. Written by David Maraniss who has written some other notable biographies. Clemente was a little before my time and I knew about him as a player and a little about his humanitarian efforts off the field, but it tought me a lot of things I didn’t know about a real baseball hero. Here’s link to it on Amazon.com.

Loved reading it as a kid. Very shocked and saddened when I first heard the news about his suicide.

Here’s some favorites from my own collection:

• “The Black Aces” – about the African-American pitchers who won twenty games in a season
• “September Swoon” – about the 1964 Phillies and the effect it had on Dick Allen’s career
• “Beyond the Sixth Game” – an excellent detailed account of the late 70s Red Sox (my childhood team) and how the Seitz ruling coupled with the death of Tom Yawkey affected their chances at becoming a dynasty
• “The Greatest Game” – an in-depth portrait of the one-game playoff between the Yankees and Red Sox back in 1978
• “A Baseball Dynasty” – the Swingin’ A’s in all their colorful, mustachioed glory
• “Root For The Cubs” – a nostalgic look back at Charlie Root and the 1929 Cubs
• “The Million To One Team” – the most accurate analysis of why the Cubs haven’t won a pennant since 1945. The book stops at Don Baylor’s hiring, so be sure to also read “Entangled In Ivy” (same author) to get the full up-to-date picture
• “It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over” – an informative and fun book from Baseball Prospectus about the classic pennant races
• “Blue Jays 1, Expos 0” – an astute history of MLB in Canada and how the historical political rivalry between Ontario and Quebec helped lead to the Expos’ demise

If you haven’t read it lately (or at all), you should. The stories are ever evolving given the time that has passed – pretty interesting even now.

I have Three Nights in August, but haven’t read it yet.

It’s one of my favorite baseball books and an outstanding look at the modern history of ownership/labor relations. The section about how dozens of big city owners and management types flocked to Catfish Hunter’s tiny home town to woo him after he declared free agency is priceless. Gene Autry even showed up and tried to curry favor with the locals by standing on a street corner handing out copies of his single of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

“The Long Ball,” by Tom Adelman, is also one of my favorites. It covers the 1975 pennant race, and provides wonderful personal glimpses into many of the players on the teams that made the play-offs, especially the Reds and Red Sox. One of the most interesting parts to me is how it illustrates how much the game has changed in just thirty-five years. It talks about Luis Tiant throwing over 160 pitches in one game, and how, before the A.L. play-off, A.L. Rookie of the Year Fred Lynn was pressed into service as a batting practice pitcher because the Sox wanted someone to prepare its hitters for Ken Holtzman. It’s hard to imagine either of those things happening today.

Another tremendous aspect of the book is how it weaves a number of past and future ML greats into the narrative by describing where they were and what they were doing during the season. One of my favorites is the description of a young Rickey Henderson hanging out in Charlie Finley’s box with his buddy, Stanley Burrell (aka MC Hammer), Finley’s fifteen-year-old vice-president. Great stuff!

but for a unique presentation of a slice of history, it’s hard to beat “The Dizziest Season.” It’s the story of the World Champion 1934 Cardinals Gashouse Gang told through contemporary newspaper stories, compiled and annotated by Gordon H. Fleming. A large part of what makes it so fascinating is the colorful and bombastic style of the sportswriters of the day. They were much better writers and seemingly better educated than the vast majority of today’s scribes.

The focus of much of the book is Dizzy Dean, en route to his 30 win season, whose incredible popularity made him the equivalent of a rock star. And for Cubs fans there are some pretty juicy and often lurid anecdotes about the Cards’s shortstop, Leo Durocher, especially involving his court testimony to answer charges of abuse by his ex-wife.

If you’re a baseball fan and are also into general cultural history, I can’t recommend it enough.

To those I would add “The Glory Of Their Times”, a book of interviews with players from the early part of the 20th Century by Lawrence Ritter. It was published over 40 years ago, but still resonates today and will tell you a lot about the early days of baseball.

First, definitely read “Ball Four” if you have not yet. The best baseball book, and one of the best books period, of the 1900s.

“Soul of Baseball” by Joe Posnanski. Buck O’Neill was an amazing man.

“The Game From Where I Stand” by Doug Glanville. Best baseball book of the year, imho.

“Feeding the Green Monster” by Rob Neyer. I love season long baseball diaries and Mr Neyer hits this one of of the park.

“Moneyball” by Michael Lewis. I haven’t reread it since its release but i have a hunch some of the ballplayers drafted the season the book chronicled have turned out to have interesting careers. I wonder how right Billy Beane was, in retrospect.

“The Historical Baseball Abstract” by Bill James. Amazing read, extremely interesting and a real page turner.

That is a great title for a book.

About 1908 pennant race, Merkle’s boner, Cubs winning the World Series, and all that.

and I’ve always recommended them to others in the past, mostly because I’m a big Bill Veeck fan…

“Veeck as in Wreck” by Bill Veeck and Ed Lynn. This is essentially Veeck’s autobiography, its a great read, it covers his life from when he was a boy working at Wrigley Field, all the way up to when he had to step down as owner of the Sox in the early 80s. This is a tell-all book that shows some of the shady dealings of other owners and operators, and commissioners for that matter throughout MLB in the 40s and 50s. Veeck did not make any friends in baseball by writing this book.

“The Hustler’s Handbook” also by Veeck and Lynn is the follow-up to the first book. But this one is more about the “art” of promotion in baseball and in life. As good as the first book.

Veeck was an interesting man, an innovator, and a terrific story teller, I highly recommend both books.

I eat paste.