Baseball Books

http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/14260000/14268611.JPG

I read "Summer of '49" when I was fifteen or so. I found it a bit long-winded and boring. No need to revisit it, I guess? :)

apparently it's full of errors.

We're pleased to make two major announcements to the SABR membership and the baseball community at large:

1) SABR is now the publisher of The Emerald Guide to Baseball, and
2) SABR is making the PDF version of The Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009 available as a FREE download from the members-only section of the website (and be sure to direct friends and family to sabr.org so they can get a copy too).

Edited by acclaimed baseball historians (and SABR members) Gary Gillette and Pete Palmer, The Emerald Guide distills the 2008 season down to 586 fact-filled pages that contain the pitching, fielding, and hitting statistics for every player active in the major and minor leagues in 2008. The Emerald Guide fills the hole in the baseball record left by the 2006 demise of the Sporting News Baseball Guide and contains all of the same features and then some, such as team-by-team daily results, a directory of important contacts, and a synopsis of the just-completed season. A bound version of The Emerald Guide is available via print on demand at Lulu.com for $23.94.

Making the PDF of The Emerald Guide available fre to anyone with accesss to a computer is a direct way for SABR to fulfill its mission of disseminating the history and record of baseball. And you, our members, help the organization fulfill this mission each and every day. One of our objectives is for sabr.org to be bookmarked by everyone with a serious interest in baseball. The Emerald Guide offers a step in that direction.

SABR plans to publish The Emerald Guide annually. Gillette and Palmer also authored 2007 and 2008 editions of The Emerald Guide (co-published with Sports-Reference). Free PDF versions of these editions are also available from the SABR website.

Thank you for your commitment to SABR and its mission. We hope you enjoy The Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009.

Sincerely,

John Zajc, Executive Director

http://sabr.org/sabr.cfm?a=cms,c,2766,36,0

fwiw, i third (?) bellisarius and felicity's recommendation of you gotta have wa. it provides a lot of interesting history of japanese baseball even if it's bit dated at this point. it would be interesting to see a new edition taking into account ichiro, matsui et al on one hand and bobby valentine on the other.

anybody have an opinion on that somewhat recent dimaggio bio? i think the author was richard cramer?

huh. how about that...

http://www.amazon.com/Samurai-Way-Baseball-Impact-Ichiro/dp/0446694037/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236859004&sr=1-4

has anone bought the Fielding Bible II? Froma BP interview with author John Dewan:

The one thing I'd bring up that was kind of fun, was the analysis of Nate McLouth and Carlos Gomez; McLouth won a Gold Glove, and Gomez didn't. Carlos Gomez had the most defensive misplays in center field, which is a characteristic of young players that we've found; other young players up there are Delmon Young, B.J. Upton, and his brother, Justin Upton. All of these players have more defensive misplays. But Carlos Gomez covers so much more ground, that it just shows through on the number of runs saved. The difference that we found between Nate McLouth and Carlos Gomez was amazingly straightforward. Simply, Gomez is covering ground in deep center field, where fielding a ball is much more valuable, than Nate McLouth, who covers more ground in shallow center field, where making a catch means that you're saving a single. Gomez, meanwhile, is saving doubles and triples. It looks to be that the biggest problem for Nate McLouth is that he should play deeper. He has good skills and a lot of good fielding plays in our system, but when we break it down between shallow, medium, and deep, which is something we did in the book this year, he's plus on shallow balls, and minus on medium and deep.

also measures Varitek as worst recent Boston catcher, lol

Yeah that was weird though cuz it sort of seemed like the return of CERA which seems very suspect.

The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 SABR-Sporting News Awards: Ron Selter for Ballparks of the Deadball Era; Andy Strasberg, Bob Thompson and Tim Wiles for Baseball's Greatest Hit; and Jim Walker and Rob Bellamy for Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television. The winners will receive their awards on Saturday, August 1, 2009, in Washington, DC, at the JW Marriott, Pennsylvania Avenue during SABR's annual convention.

The Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Award recognizes outstanding baseball research published in the previous calendar year in areas other than history and biography. The Award is designed to honor projects that do not fit the criteria for The Seymour Medal or the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award. The Sporting News sponsors the $200 cash awards that accompany the honor.

Ballparks of the Deadball Era is Ronald Selter's comprehensive study of Deadball Era-ballparks and park effects, in which he shows the extent to which ballparks determined the style of play. Organized by major league city, this fact-filled, data-heavy commentary includes all 34 ballparks used by the American and National Leagues from 1901 through 1919.

In Baseball's Greatest Hit, Strasberg, Thompson, and Wiles present the complete story of the third-most frequently sung song in America: “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” The book features countless photos and illustrations, providing a pictorial history of the song’s influence on the game and American culture. A bonus CD is also included, which features many rare and classic recordings of the song from artists such as Dr. John, the Ray Brown Trio, Carly Simon, and George Winston.

In Center Field Shot, Walker and Bellamy trace the sometimes contentious but mutually beneficial relationship between baseball and television, from the first televised game in 1939 to the contemporary era of Internet broadcasts, satellite radio, and high-definition TV. Ultimately, the association of baseball with television emerges as a reflection American culture at large.

Baseball America's top ten of '09:

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/majors/book-guide/2009/269330.html

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Hair-Plastic-Grass-Baseball/dp/0312607547/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266884385&sr=8-1

Thanks, Matos WK.

dude's got a blog too!

http://www.bighairplasticgrass.com/

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/baseball-historians-get-their-own-hall/

Anyone read this?

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Strikes-Out-Baseball-Promoted/dp/1595581952/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269999008&sr=8-3

Started Fifty-Nine in '84 last night. It's pretty decent so far. A little too fond of sounding like a 19th c. newsman at times.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ebooks/free_ebook.html

Anyone have this coffee table book?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0711/neil.leifer.baseball.book/content.1.html

Fifty-nine in '84 was weirdly obsessed with the existence of hookers and the possibility that Hoss Radbourn's true love had been one

The Bullpen Gospels is basically a feel-good Ball Four. You get mentions of baseball groupies and drinking, but none of the gory details. Damn, I need to read Ball Four again.

Haven't read it but I'm guessing it's solid.

Beyond Batting Average
Over the past few decades, a multitude of advanced hitting, pitching, fielding and base running measures have been introduced to the baseball world. This comprehensive sabermetrics primer will introduce you to these new statistics with easy to understand explanations and examples. It will illustrate the evolution of statistics from simple traditional measures to the more complex metrics of today. You will learn how all the statistics are connected to winning and losing games, how to interpret them, and how to apply them to performance on the field. By the end of this book, you will be able to evaluate players and teams through statistics more thoroughly and accurately than you could before.

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fStoreID=873874

RFI: a basic baseball book for my GF. I feel like I need to introduce slash stats before I can get all wonky. Also, she watched a little of SNBB w/ me last night and, say what you will abt J morgan, having super slo-mo shots of swings is v v educational.

basic as far as analysis or history goes?

Allen Barra, a Birmingham native, has a history of Rickwood Field out:

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/majors/book-guide/2010/2610530.html

just finished The Bullpen Gospels last week. not a bad read. i preferred the lighthearted stuff over the more serious bits.

http://www.insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth/archives/2010/09/ball-four-more.html

Haven't read the piece yet, but thanks for the link. Along with James's and Kael's books, and (its influence long since dissapated) The Catcher in the Rye, no book ever influenced me more. Read it at just the perfect time, when I was the 12th guy on my high-school basketball team, cracking wise about the despotic coach and some of the lunks ahead of me. I was booted off the team within a year or two of reading Ball Four; not sure if that would have happened without a nudge from Bouton.

has anyone read "'78" by bill reynolds?

no.

John Thorn has an early-days history coming in March:

https://baseballeden.com/Home.html

im reading '78 right now. BF got me eight men out for xmas, that's next.

David Ulin of the LA Times picks his all-time favorites:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-et-0331-baseball-books-20110331,0,7729658.story

"The Long Season" by Jim Brosnan (1960). Ten years before "Ball Four," Brosnan published the first (and still best) baseball diary

I've never heard of this book!

Was there nothing good written after 1983?

I liked the Bronsan book when I read it years ago, but I find it surprising that anyone would list it rather than--or at least alongside--Ball Four, unless you object to Bouton's book for the same reasons Bowie Kuhn and Mickey Mantle did.

This is perfect -- I was just hunting for a good baseball book list (and couldn't really find one anywhere).

Ball Four is a tough read - the narrator is so, I don't know, unlikeable (and not a good writer, though why should he be). Have read about a third and have put it into the "not right now" pile.

I didn't read B4 til a couple years ago and found it immensely readable.

I've only read two of the books on that list in their entirety.

ie, Malamud and Angell.

tho I miiiight have read the Breslin book on the Mets a very long time ago.

the coover book is great but not really about baseball

Ball Four is a tough read - the narrator is so, I don't know, unlikeable (and not a good writer, though why should he be).

Majorly, majorly disagree. Unlikeable, maybe--I find Bouton very likeable, more in love with the quirks and absurdities of baseball than an underpaid, aging reliever barely hanging on with a doomed franchise ought to be, but I can see where someone might find him to be a self-obsessed wiseass. But as to the other point, I think he's a better writer than most writers. (How much credit belongs with Leonard Shecter, his editor, I don't know.)

Clemenza and I totally agree! Bouton is immensely likeable and a great writer. A lousy actor though. Laughable in the Long Goodbye.

No Eight Men Out? That's a very good book imo.

I couldn't make the adjustment to us agreeing, Alex...I think Bouton's fine in The Long Goodbye. Not an actor, agreed, but the guy he's playing is a superficial operator whose slickness is supposed to contrast with Gould's dogged, somewhat clumsy virtuousness, and by that yardstick I think he does okay. When he tells Marlowe at the end that that's the way it is, guys like him are chumps who are there to be taken advantage of, I find Bouton credibly slimy.

I can't stand the movie so I don't really like anything about it.

Surprising...Just the movie itself, or '70s Altman in general? Mark Rydell delivers a line that's on my short-list of funniest ever.

The movie. Although there are other 70s Altman flicks I can't stand there is plenty I love.

1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York, written by SABR members Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg, is the winner of the 2011 Seymour Medal, which honors the best book of baseball history or biography published during the preceding calendar year.

http://sabr.org/latest/spatz-and-steinbergs-1921-awarded-2011-seymour-medal

Wow, impressed with the consensus on Ball Four. I should pick it back up then, huh!

I'd also recommend the follow-up, I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally, which covers Bouton's half-season with the Astros in '70, his release, and the fallout from Ball Four (some priceless stuff on Bowie Kuhn). Not as good, but good nonetheless. He also wrote a book on managers that I read years ago and liked. There were chapters on Harry Walker, Joe Schultz (shitfuck, a must), Houk, etc. Pretty sure it was called I Managed Good, but Boy Did They Play Bad.

Bouton has a website where you can arrange to get books autographed: http://www.jimbouton.com/. I continue to think about doing this...it's a little pricey, but I think the money goes to charity.

for Ball Four fans:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/ball-four-tracers/

So thank you all for getting me to stick with Ball Four. It's an awesome piece of work, insightful and fascinating, and Bouton comes across clever, compassionate and decades ahead of his time. His team-mates, for the most part, not so much! I definitely want to pick up the sequel now.

Shawn Green has a Zen-inflected memoir out:

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/8/2/2306220/shawn-green-interview

An interesting postscript to The Echoing Green -- Ralph Branca just found out, through Joshua Prager, that his mother was Jewish and that several of his relatives died at Auschwitz:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/sports/baseball/for-branca-an-asterisk-of-a-different-kind.html?pagewanted=all

Stumbled over this searching for a Merritt Ranew quote:

http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz1704811385e00.html

20/25.

A few more from the same sale (over at 5:00 today, saving me from myself):

Robert Creamer's Mickey Mantle: The Quality of Courage
Charles Alexander's John McGraw
Tom Gorman's Three and Two! (umpire, before my time I think)
Frank Graham's The New York Yankees: An Informal History
Zev Chafets' Cooperstown Confidential
Harvey Frommer's New York City Baseball
Peter Golenbock's Bums
Mac Davis's Baseball's Unforgettables (couldn't possibly be the same guy)
Arnold Hano's Willie Mays

...which I think I already have with a different cover; published when Mays was still active.

https://i.postimg.cc/vBhBzqpH/hano.jpg

Ordered this yesterday (the author did a guest-post on Posnanski's Substack):

https://i.postimg.cc/L4PMWxct/locker.jpg

Ludtke was covering the WS for Sports Illustrated in 1977 and had a run-in with Bowie Kuhn about locker-room access.

a brief o. henry story. we really need to bring back 'daisy cutters' as slang for ground balls

A Personal Insult

A YOUNG LADY in Houston became engaged last summer to one of the famous short stops of the Texas base ball league.

Last week he broke the engagement, and this is the reason why:

He had a birthday last Tuesday, and she sent him a beautiful bound and illustrated edition of Coleridge’s famous poem, “The Ancient Mariner.”

The hero of the diamond opened the book with a puzzled look.

“What’s dis bloomin’ stuff about anyways?” he said.

He read the first two lines:

It is the Ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three—

The famous short stop threw the book out the window, stuck out his chin, and said:

“No Texas sis can gimme de umpire face like dat. I swipes nine daisy cutters outer ten dat comes in my garden, I do.”

The Banty, Blustering Genius of Earl Weaver
The famous Baltimore Orioles manager gets a vivid new biography, the book equivalent of “a screaming triple into the left field corner.”

https://archive.is/k48r4#selection-703.0-707.136

My favourite manager ever, second-favourite sabermetrician; will buy and read for sure.

^^As I posted on another thread, that Weaver book turned out to be excellent.

Joe Posnanski's 10 greatest sports books ever--baseball at #4, 3, and 1.

10. Levels of the Game, John McPhee
9. The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated, Michael MacCambridge
8. (tie): The City Game, Pete Axthelm; Heaven Is a Playground; Rick Telander.
7. When Pride Still Mattered, David Maraniss.
6. Season on the Brink, John Feinstein
5. Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand
4. Ball Four, Jim Bouton
3. The New Bill James Historical Abstract, Bill James
2. Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby
1. The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn

My own picks for the three greatest baseball books would be the same Bouton and James, then the Big Mac encyclopedia (don't have the first edition--my first one went up to '73, I believe).

With Joe's own The Baseball 100 not too far behind.

St. Marys Library book sale (think they all came from the HOF here):

The Treasures of Major League Baseball - MLB coffee-table thing
Nineteenth Century Stars - SABR publication
The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History - Phil Dixon
Baseball Graphics '79 Sampler - John Warner Davenport: a 14-page pamphlet that goes for $50 online
My Favorite Summer 1956 - Mickey Mantle & Phil Pepe: uncorrected proof
The World Series: The Statistical Record - Harold R. Paretchan
Lost Summer: The '67 Red Sox and the Impossbile Dream - Bill Reynolds
The Scooter: The Phil Rizzuto Story - Gene Schoor
Roger Maris: A Man for All Seasons - Maury Allen
Run, Rabbit, Run: The Hilarious and Mostly True Tales of Rabbit Maranville - Rabbit Maranville
The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant - Robin Roberts & C. Paul Rogers III
The Perfect Game - collection of SABR writing, foreword by Bill James
The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together - Michael Shapiro
Newark Bears - Randolph Linthurst - SABR publication
The Record Makers of the American Association - 1945 edition
Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Social Perspectives - Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall '92
Saskatchewan Historical Baseball Review - 1984, 1985, 1986, 1994, 1996, 1997 editions
Who's Who in Baseball - 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 editions

+ various media guides: '74 Padres, '75 Reds, '75 Red Sox, '75 Mets, '75 Indians, '76 Reds

+ autographed copy of The Game Is Easy - Life Is Hard, Dorothy Turcotte's biography of Fergie Jenkins (found the same last year, will give this one to a friend)

https://i.postimg.cc/QMgHgPNp/review.jpg

Didn't know about this till I found a used copy yesterday:

https://i.postimg.cc/wMGqR6gZ/pirates.jpg

Came out in 2007...I don't read too many baseball books pre-mid-'60s, so expect to learn a lot. That was the Series where the Yankees outscored (55-27!) and thoroughly outplayed the Pirates but lost anyway on Mazeroski's famous walk-off. So 1) may be too close for comfort, and 2) I'll be reading from the perspective of a Yankees fan? Yikes.

Defector reads The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. J. Henry Waugh, Prop.

https://defector.com/the-universal-baseball-association-inc-j-henry-waugh-prop-drab

Non paywalled:
https://archive.is/kJnP7

I love that book and think about it a lot. Less for what it says about baseball and more for what it says about how we constitute our own reality as we live it, as a narrative we weave around what are essentially dice rolls, and if there's anything more than that where we flex our will, what are those moments, and what do they say about us?

It's wild to realise that it was written before D&D existed

Like.. one of the yawning horrors at the heart of baseball is that much of it is essentially narrativeless, that teams are unable to meaningfully adjust their chances of executing in high or low leverage situations, that all they can do is just try to take care of the details and hope the outcomes take care of themselves, but we the fans see each game as a story, we experience each game as a story, it's hard-wired into us, it's impossible not to. And is that also perhaps not also one of the yawning horrors at the heart of human lives?

<3