best baseball book on non popular players.

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Posted By: sean

Am reading my arse off reading bios and was wanting lists of books on pre ww2 players that arent so popular. Heres what I have read:

Johnny Kling
Tinker,evers, chance
Mordecai brown
hughie jennings
hal chase
ray chapman/carl mays
John Mcgraw
Walter Johnson
Rube Waddell
Ed Delahanty
Moe Berg
Fred Lieb

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Posted By: RC

Just picked up a book on George Sisler called "The Sizzler", written by Rick Huhn. It was put out by the University of Missouri Press in 2004. Apparently the author was asked by Sisler's son to write the bio. He is definitely not unknown but the subtitle "Baseball's Forgotten Great" sets the tone that perhaps because he was mild mannered, etc... that he was overshadowed by other greats of his time.

I am about halfway through the book, it's not bad and might be another that you would enjoy reading.

RC

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Posted By: Justin

Get the Deadball Stars of the National/American League books. They were put out by SABR recently and they are awesome. Tons of pictures and great bios.

Mike Sowell wrote a book about Ed Delahanty that I haven't read, and one called The Pitch That Killed which is about Chapman/Mays which is excellent.

Definitely get Glory of Their Times which is the best baseball book ever written.

Other than that I would suggest the team histories written by people like Warren Brown and Fred Lieb, which contain alot of anecdotes and info about alot of forgotten players.

Also check out Red Legs and Black Sox. It's a bio of Edd Roush which also tells the Black Sox scandal from the perspective of the Reds and the city of Cincinnatti.

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Posted By: peter chao

Guys,

Maybe John McGraw wasn't very popular but Christy Mathewson was one of the most beloved pitchers of all time and couldn't possibly be on the list of non popular players.

Peter

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Posted By: John H.

Peter, I'm thinking that he means players that aren't so well known.

John

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Posted By: Mike

One of the most entertaining books on individual players is a book on Rube called "Rube Waddell" The Zany, brilliant life of a strikeout artist". By Alan levy. Printed in 2000. So it should still be available. Very Funny, Sad, interesting, and all the rest. I highly recommend it. If anyone can't find it, I can get it.

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Posted By: sean

thanks Justin! I ordered the Deadball greats books through my library. I also just got The fred Lieb team books and am VERY much looking forward to reading about these guys throuhg someone who actually knew them!

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Posted By: John H.

There's a fairly new Tris Speaker book, by Timothy Gay, that I'm going to start in on very soon. Tris was a superstar (before there was such a term) but there hasn't been very much written about him over the years. Should be interesting.

John