Not baseball, but a friend of mine has told me I needed to get the following book. Said it was really good:
http://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-World...ion/1400064163
Basically its about Louie Zamperini who grew up in the 20's, competed in the 1936 Olympics, was in WWII where his plane went down and, "On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun."
Anyways, not baseball, but somewhat sports related and from what I've been told by others, a great story about a veteran..