wow. just got the chills... Baseball Books

For those who like fiction as well as non-, Don Delillo brilliantly recreated this game in a long short story called "Pafko At the Wall" which he later adapted into the preface to his gargantuan novel Underworld.  That story, along with John Updike's essay "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" are, I think, the greatest writings on baseball I've ever encountered.

baseball books were discussed a short time ago.  check out the link.

http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/story/2006/8/26/22943/1987

I always wondered what Ralph Branca had for breakfast that day.

Leonard Koppett's "The Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball" and anything by Roger Kahn, such as "Memories of Summer" which -- like all good baseball books -- illuminate a slice of America.

Boswell's "How Life Imitates the World Series" is great, too.

For the sabermetric minds out there, I recommend these annuals:  Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster (cheap at Amazon, but you get extra goodies if buy direct, about $10 more), Baseball Prospectus if you want something similar to the old Bill James Abstracts (but not as good, imo - then again, will anyone attain his heights again?), The Hardball Times had a good start with their annual and I like their website, particularly all the free data (BP now charges, but THT won't be free forever either), and The Bill James Handbook.

Ron Shandler's group also publishes two other annuals I recommend:  Minor League Baseball Analyst by Deric McKamey and Graphical Pitcher(2006 and before)/Player (from now on, starting 2007) by John Burnson.  The former gives McKamey's estimation of what type of player the prospect will ultimately be based on his training in the MLB scouting program and his saber-tools developed writing for Shandler, plus a lot of prospects and their component stats over the past few years, plus key skills, like pitchers pitches (and how good they are) and the speeds they throw each at, and hitters power, hitting, speed, and defense.  The latter uses graphs predominantly to illustrate a pitcher's career stats and his recent stats, to see how they did, both trends in career and in-season trends.

If you want a book, The Numbers Game by Alan Schmwarz is great for giving you a history of stats in baseball, from the very beginnings to Bill James to Retrosheet.  

Curve Ball, by Jim Albert and Jay Bennett, is great if you want to become well-versed with why, statistically, many of the things are true that sabers like to talk about, like OBP and OPS.  If you want to go beyond that, Jim Albert also wrote a book teaching statistics using baseball stats aptly titled, "Teaching Statistics Using Baseball."

If you like to wallow in history and nostaglia, like I do, I recommend The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, he covers a lot of players in there, writing anywhere from a paragraph to an essay length feature on players who have made a name for themselves in the history of the game.  

If you admire Earl Weaver, I recommend his book, "Weaver on Strategy:  Classic Work on Art of Managing a Baseball Team."  Lots of thought provoking suggestions and he lays out his thinking as a manager out on the pages.  Good read.

And lastly I must note a book I would NOT recommend to anyone except gamblers and perhaps extreme beginners in sabermetrics:  A Mathematician at the Ballpark:  Odds and Probabilities by Ken Ross.  Very thin and small book with large print, goes over rudimentary baseball stats for anybody and spends too much of the book on gambling odds.  Buying this book reminds me of why I loved buying books in stores, I wouldn't have bought this book had I browsed through it in a book store but I bought this through Amazon.  I'm sure he wrote it with a good heart but I feel I was ripped off, it really should have been titled, "Odds and Probabilities for Beginners and Gamblers and, hey, let's use a little baseball for examples".