Baseball Books

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.

I'm reading "Ball Four" again and was looking up some of the players on B-R. Cheers on sponsoring the Joe Schultz page, clemenza!

(although there are MUCH better Joe Schultz quotes, IMO) :)

Thanks. There are so many to choose from. Knowing I couldn't get "shitfuck" or "fuckshit" in there, that eliminated about half off the top. There's just something about the absurdity of the roast beef quote I love. (I used to sponsor Fred Talbot's page, too, until a relative of his contacted me about giving it up.)

When you finish, NoTime, try the quiz I linked to in the post previous to yours--it's still up.

I got 21/25. I probably should have done better considering I just read the book.

Schultz never managed again, with the exception of a cup of coffee with the Tigers a few years later. I guess his year with the Pilots gave him a reputation as a loser that he couldn't shake?

wau

I feel it's like owning a copy of the Magna Carta. I'm somewhat biased.

Damn that's incredible clemenza.

I missed a line in that Wikipedia entry: the first edition sold 75 copies (one of whom was presumably Martin)...I posted about this in Facebook. Half of me was thinking "You shouldn't be attracting attention with something this rare." The other half was laughing at that half: "Haven't you learned yet--no one cares about this stuff. Criminals are busy stealing cars--they're not combing Facebook looking for Baseball Abstracts."

So cool!

Amazing clem, congratulations on your acquisition (and your unofficial HOF induction)!

On the induction, thanks. On the other...Jesus, this is embarrassing...it's a reprint. When Martin gave me the book, I took a quick look and put it right in a bag. Looked exactly like the '78/'79/'80 editions I already have: card-stock cover, a little faded, hand-stapled. I was posting yesterday from a coffee shop on my way home; found the image above online.

So how did I figure out that it's a reprint when I got home? It required a lot of detective work:

https://i.postimg.cc/jSN0FyPy/reprint.jpg

(Thought about posting this in the absent-minded thread--yes, I actually managed not to notice that. If I had bought it online, I'd be looking at the expensive-stupidity thread, created by me for me.)

I don't even have the heart to revisit the Facebook post, where I tagged Martin. Still excited to have it, but obviously not quite where I was yesterday.

Let me now tell you all about the Picasso I bought on eBay last month.

Sorry to go on about this...As I suspected, the reprints are pretty rare in and of themselves:

https://picclick.com/Vintage-Bill-James-Baseball-Abstract-Set-1977-1978-262998858206.html

If that's accurate, this person sold the first five for $2,500, with the '77 and '78 editions reprints; I've got the '77 reprint and originals for '78-'81 (which Mike Saunders--Creem, Angry Samoans--gave to me years ago), so presumably the value would be comparable.

The story of the '77 reprint is pretty interesting according to that link: "reprints are just as rare as they were only produced (allegedly by Bill James' wife) upon written request." I don't know if that's how Martin got his or if he bought it second-hand.

Ordered a copy of this today:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/andy-mccullough/the-last-of-his-kind/9780306832598/?lens=hachette-books

Honestly, it was mostly to support the one book store in town--I try to order something every month or two. I don't think it's something I would have bought otherwise, although at least it's a biography rather than an autobiography.