From: spira@panix.com (Greg "Sarcasm Is A Way Of Life" Spira)
Subject: Baseball Book Survey Bi-Monthly Repost
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 05:41:10 GMT
Organization: So Many Baseball Books, So Little Time  


This is a "survey" of the best baseball non-fiction readily available
these days.  I post this piece about every 2 months.  There have been a
few minor changes/corrections this time, and one or two books have been
added to the list, but there haven't been any major alterations.  I have
not as of yet been able to add any of this season's new crop to the list,
mostly because I haven't had much time to read this summer.  I'll try to
post some reviews by the end of September.

Several of the listed books are now available on remainder in major
bookstore chains.  These include The Ballplayers (priced around $19.95),
Our Game (priced around $7.95), and Prophet of the Sandlots (priced
around $4.95).  

Comments are welcome - just e-mail.



And away we go:

HISTORY:

The most accessible general history of baseball that has been published
can be found in David Voight's three volumes of American Baseball.  
Harold Seymour's Baseball - The Early Years and Baseball - The Golden Age
provide a more scholarly and detailed history of baseball through the
1920s.  Seymour's more recent Baseball: The People's Game provides an
unparalleled account of the early history of the game outside Organized
Baseball.  Charles Alexander's Our Game is a solid one volume history
of the game.                       

Some excellent baseball history books which focus on more specific
topics are:    

Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof - the story of the 1919 Black Sox

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn - a recollection of the 1952-3 Brooklyn
Dodgers

The Pitch that Killed by Mike Sowell - a fascinating study of the circumstances
behind the only time a major leaguer was ever killed by a pitched ball.


BIOGRAPHY:

Charles Alexander's Ty Cobb and John McGraw are probably the two best
baseball biographies ever written.  Almost as good are Robert Creamer's
Babe and Stengel - His Life and Times.  Ed Linn co-authored the two most
colorful baseball biographies ever written: he co-wrote Veeck as in 
Wreck with Bill Veeck and Nice Guys Finish Last with Leo Durocher. Other
notable biographies include:

The Long Season by Jim Brosnan - the first real baseball "diary" written
by a ballplayer

Ball Four by Jim Bouton - an honest, incisive look at the dynamics of a
baseball team by a controversial player

A False Spring by Pat Jordan - a memoir of a baseball player who failed to
fulfill his dreams


BASEBALL LABOR AND ECONOMICS:

Lee Lowenfish's recently updated The Imperfect Diamond is far and away
the best account of baseball's labor-management struggles.  Marvin
Miller's recent A Whole Different Ballgame, written with Allen Barra, is
a fascinating though somewhat repetitive account of the success of the
Players Association.  Gerald Scully's The Business of Major League
Baseball is a scholarly overview of the economics of MLB.  James
Miller's The Baseball Business: Pursuing Pennants & Profits in Baltimore
is a fascinating look at the workings of one major league organization.
I should also mention Bowie Kuhn's Hardball, which is well written but
deeply flawed by Kuhn's distortion of reality.  


STATISTICAL AND SABERMETRIC ANALYSIS

As is mentioned in rsb often, Pete Palmer and John Thorn's Hidden Game of
Baseball and the Bill James Historical Abstract are clearly the two
superior works of this category.  Bill James' This Time Lets Not Eat The
Bones is an uneven survey of James' work before 1988. The Diamond Appraised
by Craig Wright is a fascinating work of applied sabermetrics (despite the
small parts of the book written by Tom House). 


SCOUTING:

Kevin Kerrane's Dollar Sign on the Muscle is an excellent overview of
scouting.  Mark Winegardner's Prophet of the Sandlots is a fascinating   
and extraordinarily well written look at Tony Lucadello, perhaps the
most succesful scout in baseball history.  


THE MINOR LEAGUES:

There is a paucity of good literature on the minor leagues.  Robert
Obojoski's Bush League is a solid if unspectacular history of the minors.
Neil Sullivan's more recent The Minors is an uneven but interesting look
at the same subject.  Steve Fireovid's recent The 26th Man (written with
Mark Winegardner) is an insightful look at the life of a mature minor
leaguer.


THE NEGRO LEAGUES AND THE ACCEPTANCE OF BLACKS INTO MLB:

Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His
Legacy is a scholarly and highly readable treatment of the subject.
Robert Peterson's Only The Ball Was White and John Holway's Voices
from the Great Negro Leagues are the best books on the Negro Leagues. 


BASEBALL OUTSIDE AMERICA:

Robert Whiting's You Gotta Have Wa is an
enjoyable if somewhat lightweight study of Japanese baseball and the
experience of Americans who play in the Japanese leagues.  There have
been several good books published in the last few years on Baseball in
Latin America, but I am afraid I am not familiar with any of them.


COLLECTIONS:

Roger Angell may be America's greatest baseball writer.  His occassional pieces
in the New Yorker have been collected in The Summer Game, Season Ticket,
Five Seasons, Late Innings, and Once More Around the Park.  The last one
contains pieces from throughout his career.  Thomas Boswell's baseball
columns have also been collected in many books; two of the finest are
How Life Imitates the World Series and How Time Begins On Opening Day.
The best general collection of baseball items can be found in the 3      
Fireside Books of Baseball, which are unfortunately out of print.  Editor
Charles Einstein has recollected many of the pieces which originally 
appeared in the Fireside books along with new pieces in The Baseball
Reader and The New Baseball Reader.  The Armchair Book of baseball and
the Armchair Book of Baseball II, both edited by John Thorn, are both
solid collections.  Also, Insiders Baseball, edited by Robert Davids, and
The National Pasttime, edited by John Thorn, are both excellent collections
of material which originally appeared in SABR publications.


BROADCASTING:

Curt Smith's Voices of the Games is a superb history of baseball      
broadcasting which has recently been updated and issued in paperback.
Red Barber's The Broadcasters is a solid history of
the pioneers of baseball broadcasting.


ENCYCLOPEDIAS

Total Baseball is the only true baseball encyclopedia.  It not only
features career statistics of every major league baseball player ever
(using both familar statistics and sabermetric measures), but also features
almost 1000 pages of text articles covering all the major aspects of the
game.  The more established Baseball Encyclopedia, published by Macmillan,
also covers the career statistics of all major leaguers ever and features
a wider variety of traditional statistical measures. The Sports 
Encyclopedia Baseball, a lower priced encyclopedia, features statistics
of players since 1901 and is organized by team and year.  The Ballplayers,
edited by Mike Shatzkin, is a well done collection of 6000 mini-biographies
of baseball people.


OTHER:

Lawrence Ritter's The Glory of Their Times is regarded by many as the best
baseball book ever written.  It is a fascinating oral history of the
baseball players of the early part of this century.

Mike Bryan's Baseball Lives is a wonderful collection of stories about
the people who live baseball, from players and scouts to front office
personnel.

David Falkner's The Short Season is an excellent book about spring
training.

Paul Dickson has compiled two reference books that are integral parts of
any collection of baseball books: The Dickson Baseball Dictionary is a
complete dictionary of baseball terms and Baseball's Greatest Quotations
is a very well selected collection of baseball wit and wisdom.  

Redefinition Inc. is publishing a series of uneven but often worthwhile
baseball books in a series called The World Of Baseball.  Titles so far
include The Hurlers, The Sluggers, The Fielders, Low and Outside, The
Explosive Sixties, October's Game, Speed, The New Professional, The
Inside Game, and The Old Ball Game.  Like most similar series, these
titles are available only by mail.

Bruce Kuklick's To Every Thing A Season: Shibe Park And Urban Philadelphia
is an excellent study of the relationship between a community and its
baseball park and teams.


-- 
  spira@panix.com       "The one-O delivery to Fisk.  He swings.  Long drive,  
 cmcl2!panix!spira      left field!  If it stays fair, it's gone!  Home Run!"  
158-17 Riverside Dr.                     Ned Martin, 10/22/75   
Whitestone NY 11357          (Insert your favorite baseball moment here) 
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