Favorite baseball book? Card or historical focused.

[commishbob]

Sitting here next to my bookshelves and there are just so many great baseball books to recommend....these jumped out at me:

Only the Ball Was White, by Robert Peterson This is the best book about the Negro Leagues that I've read.

The Long Season, by Jim Brosnan His diary of the 1959 season. If you want baseball history this one will really show you what it was like late in that decade.

You Gotta Have Wa, by Robert Whiting-great book about baseball in japan

The Catcher Was a Spy, by Nicholas Dawidoff, Moe Berg's story

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?, by Jimmy Breslin 1962 Mets, Breslin was a terrific writer

Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, by Robert W. Creamer

Ball Four by Jim Bouton

The Curse of Rocky Colavito, by Terry Pluto

Eight Men Out, by Eliot Asinof

The Echoing Green, by Joshua Prager Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca, etc. Really a neat book.

Dollar Sign on the Muscle, by Kevin Kerrane A great look at baseball scouting. Lots of fun stories about the profession. Not a new book but still a great read.

Crazy '08, by Cait Murphy

Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen

Sayonara Home Run!, by John Gall and Gary Engel this one is about Japanese baseball cards. Highly recommended

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, by Jane Leavy My favorite baseball biography. All of her three baseball bios are worth reading but I'm partial to this one.

A False Spring, by Pat Jordan Jordan was a writer for SI (and a curmudgeon) but in high school, he was a pitching phenom signed by the Braves. This is my favorite book of them all. It's not uplifting to read about how his career in baseball went south but it's so well written! I pull it out every few years and re-read it.

Seasons in Hell, by Mike Shropshire, may be the funniest baseball book I've ever read. It's about Whitey Herzog's awful Rangers teams in the early 70s.


I have Dock Ellis and the Country of baseball cued up to read, and it's gotten lots of good reviews, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I'm still working on Joe Posnanski's The Baseball's 100

[Peter_Spaeth]

Echo the recommendation for The Celebrant.

[bobw]

A Whole Different Ball Game by Marvin Miller

How the Players Association was started and everything that happened during Marvin Miller's tenure. Lockouts, Curt Flood, Catfish Hunter......

There's a chapter about Topps and the Players Association.

[Stampsfan]

As mentioned above, "The Bronx Zoo" is tremendously entertaining recounting a wacky time.

I didn't see it while scanning other replies, so I'll throw out a classic in "The Boys of Summer".

[byrone]

About once a year re-read Bill Veeck’s classic “Veeck as in Wreck”

[kaddyshack]

" Miracle Ball " by Brian Bigel

Documents the search for the baseball that Bobby Thomson hit off of Ralph Branca.

Excellent reading. There is a DVD, but I can't find it.

[Yoda]

I like Frank Deford's work for personal reasons; he was the father-in-law of my eldest daughter Lauren who married his son Chris. Sadly Frank left us about four years ago and is sadly missed by many. He wrote across many spectrums, including fiction. My favorite two books about baseball he wrote were "Matty and McGraw" and the hilarious "Casey at the Bat".

[Huck]

Originally Posted by commishbob

Sitting here next to my bookshelves and there are just so many great baseball books to recommend....these jumped out at me:

Dollar Sign on the Muscle, by Kevin Kerrane A great look at baseball scouting. Lots of fun stories about the profession. Not a new book but still a great read.

I have some of the same books on my shelf. I really enjoyed "Dollar Sign on the Muscle". Follow that with "Prophet of the Sandlots". I did not see the ending coming.

Other good reads:

The Politics of Glory - about getting into the HOF by Bill James
Men at Work - by George Will
Nine Innings - by Okrent
The Fireside books of Baseball (three editions) are decent.

While reading the favorite reads of other members, I don't recall seeing anything by Roger Angell. What gives?