FanPost

40 baseball books in '06

It was supposed to be 50, but I didn't get there, I only got to 40. Here's the list:

  1. jon miller: confessions of a baseball purist
  2. alan schwarz: the numbers game
  3. michael seidel: streak: joe dimaggio and the summer of '41
  4. eliot asinof: eight men out
  5. lawrence ritter: the glory of their times
  6. bette bao lord: in the year of the boar and jackie robinson
  7. robert mayer: notes of a baseball dreamer
  8. roger angell: five seasons
9 . nicholas dawidoff: the catcher was a spy: the mysterious life of moe berg
  1. david halberstam: summer of '49
  2. bill gilbert: they also served: baseball and the home front, 1941-45
  3. nick peters: tales from the giants dugout
  4. david halberstam: october 1964
  5. susan dellinger: red legs and black sox: edd roush and the untold story of the 1919 world series
  6. steve fiffer: how to watch baseball
  7. frank deford: the old ball game: how john mcgraw, christy mathewson, and the new york giants created modern baseball
  8. howard bryant: juicing the game
  9. louis masur: autumn glory: baseball's first world series
  10. jean hastings ardell: breaking into baseball
  11. buzz bissinger: three nights in august
  12. eldon ham: larceny and old leather: the mischievous legacy of major league baseball
  13. josh suchon: this gracious season: barry bonds and the greatest year in baseball
  14. charles einstein: willie's time
  15. george will: men at work
  16. michael coffey: 27 men out: baseball's perfect games
  17. paul dickson: the hidden language of baseball
  18. thomas oliphaunt: praying for gil hodges
  19. jim klobuchar: high and inside
  20. allen barra: brushbacks and knockdowns
  21. david a. nathan: saying it's so: a cultural history of the black sox scandal
  22. joe morgan: long balls, no strikes: what baseball must do to keep the good times rolling
  23. robert peterson: only the ball was white: a hstory of legendary black players and all-black professional teams
  24. jim bouton: ball four
  25. roger kahn: the head game: baseball seen from the pitcher's mound
  26. matt johnson: giants: where have you gone?
  27. curt smith: the storytellers: from mel allen to bob costas, sixty years of baseball tales from the broadcast booth
  28. john schulian: twilight of the long-ball gods: dispatches from the disappearing heart of baseball
  29. roger kahn: the boys of summer
  30. phillip hoose: perfect, once removed
  31. charles c. alexander: breaking the slump: baseball in the depression era
And there we have it. A lot of them are seeming to blur together. There were a few that pulled out far and away ahead of the rest, but I absolutely say that "Willie's Time" was the best book I read this year and maybe in a very long time. So thanks to the recommender/s on this site because otherwise I would never have heard of it. And thanks to you all for the other recs too. And I'd like to thank the SF Library. If the Man is keeping track of what patrons check out I hope they have at least found some decent baseball books to read.

People keep saying, "I didn't know there WERE 40 (50) baseball books in the world!" And I tell them that what I've found out, as you guys all know, is that even if I read nothing but baseball books from now until I died at a ripe healthy old age, I still wouldn't read all the baseball books there are in the world.

Not only that, but there's at least two or three new baseball books released every month. So I doubt I'll ever catch up and that's fine.

I'll end this rambling thing here. It's been a very good year.

This FanPost is reader-generated, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of McCovey Chronicles. If the author uses filler to achieve the minimum word requirement, a moderator may edit the FanPost for his or her own amusement.

Recent FanPosts