Your Favorite Baseball Books

[JollyElm]

Here's a cool bunch of them (couldn't quickly find my copy of 'Ball Four' to add to the pile)...

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[jimtigers65]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Here's a cool bunch of them (couldn't quickly find my copy of 'Ball Four' to add to the pile)...

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Just picked up Dan Epstein’s Big Hair and Plastic Fields.I stumbled on his other book Stars and Stripes about the 1976 season. Found it at a library dollar sale. Really good read with lots of interesting tidbits.

[AstroJake09]

Currently reading “The Southpaw” the first in a series of four books by Mark Harris about the life and career of fictional pitcher Henry Wiggen published in 1953. Still have a long way to go with it but it had good reviews and seems to really capture the essence of the game or at least as much as one could in a book. It’s definitely a fun read! You feel like you are part of the team going through the grind of the season. The best parts are probably the off the field bits although the game recaps are just vivid as if your sitting there in the dugout. I like it so far.

[Mbjerry]

Originally Posted by AstroJake09

Currently reading “The Southpaw” the first in a series of four books by Mark Harris about the life and career of fictional pitcher Henry Wiggen published in 1953. Still have a long way to go with it but it had good reviews and seems to really capture the essence of the game or at least as much as one could in a book. It’s definitely a fun read! You feel like you are part of the team going through the grind of the season. The best parts are probably the off the field bits although the game recaps are just vivid as if your sitting there in the dugout. I like it so far.

I'd like to mix in some fiction. Sounds interesting.

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[metroac]

Maybe I'll Pitch Forever by Satchel Paige is something you might like. I haven't read them in a while, but Jim Brosnan's two books, The Pennant Race and A Long Season, laid the groundwork for Bouton's Ball Four. (Brosnan was a reliever for the Reds' '61 pennant winners.) I think David Halberstam's October, 1964 might have already been mentioned, and I'd second that nomination.

Marvin Miller's autobiography, A Whole Different Ballgame, is also well worth your time, though it's not about game's greats. Lotsa great reading out there.

[Frankish]

I'll second, third, fourth, or whatever The Glory of Their Time, The Boys of Summer, and The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. A Complete History of the Negro Leagues and The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues are books I really enjoyed, although drier reading than the above. For Cuban baseball, I also enjoyed The Pride of Havana.

[metroac]

Fiction? W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe (which is the basis of Field of Dreams), The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings by William Brasher (also made into a movie), Pride of the Bimbos by John Sayles, The Celebrant by Eric Rolfe Greenberg (featuring Christy Mathewson), and Waiting for Teddy Williams by Howard Frank Mosher. If you're ambitious, the prologue to Don Delillo's Underworld is all about the "Shot Heard Round the World." The prologue was later published as a standalone novella titled Pafko at the Wall (96 pages) if you don't want to make the commitment to Underworld (832 pages). (You can get Pafko at the Wall as an ebook for three bucks.)

One other non-fiction book I'd recommend: Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball by Donald Hall.

[metroac]

Again on the topic of fiction, The Sun Field by Heywood Broun was the first mainstream novel that took baseball (Babe Ruth in this case) as its subject. It was published in 1923 and wasn't reprinted until 2008. In the days before the internet, it took me years of searching to find a copy, but now the reprint is readily available.

[egri]

Doris Kearns Goodwin's memoir Wait 'Till Next Year is good worth a read as well.