Mostly true story: I attended a media-ish party at an acquaintance's apartment a little while back. When I entered his lair, I was greeted by a bunch of people I recognized from their bylines, all of whom were almost as socially inept when distanced from their computers as I am. The conversation veered toward RSS feeds and the debt structure of the New York Times. As I am wont to do in such situations, I glanced around nervously for either a keg or a fire escape.
On my way to the door and horrible, horrible freedom, I happened upon the bookshelf of the host's roommate. Much to my surprise, it was packed with baseball tomes -- not merely the obvious candidates, but 15 or 20 with which I wasn't familiar. Inappropriate houseguest that I am, I pulled a few off the shelf, which prompted their owner to descend upon me as he might a burglar. After I assured him that I was just a humble baseball dork out of his league conversationally amid the media folk, we ended up chatting for the next two hours about the books and the game in general ("you know who was, like, awesome? Don Mattingly!").
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| Pick up 'Moneyball' and read Billy Beane's secrets. (Getty Images) |
There have been roughly 1,200 times as many scholarly, nostalgic, bawdy, analytical and offbeat tomes written about baseball as there have been about the other major and minor sports combined. Off the top of your head, can you name five great football books? I've got three: David Halberstam's Belichick breakdown, Mark Bowden's recounting of the Giants/Colts title game and Bloggin' Buzz Bissinger's heartbreaking Friday Night Lights.
Why are there so many more books about baseball? I have a theory: Baseball writers tend to be wordy, transfixed by minutiae and viciously opinionated, as likely to argue about the merits of two comparable players as to unleash an unrelated though no less opinionated rant ("if you accessorize that Pad Thai with anything other than a piquant Gewürztraminer, you are a BARBARIAN"). We like to think and we like to do our homework -- which is why, without having read it, we can feel secure that Selena Roberts' upcoming Alex Rodriguez expose will go far beyond "A-Rod is a jackass who's very good at baseball."
So here's my list of baseball literary essentials, with apologies to The Catcher Was a Spy, The Boys of Summer and pretty much every word that has flown from the pens of the Baseball Prospectus gang. Get to readin', kids. Between these books and the NCAA tourney, you should be covered until Opening Day.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
Just because it's an obvious choice doesn't mean it isn't a good one. In retrospect, the strategic "secrets" unveiled in the book (teams that put more men on base tend to score more runs? Whoa! Bombshell in aisle three!) aren't what make Moneyball such a wildly entertaining read. Rather, it's the mini-portraits: of Scott Hatteberg, of Jeremy Brown, of guru's guru Bill James. Several years after the fact, it remains amazing that Billy Beane allowed Lewis as much access as he did. Let's see: you're a baseball David beating the dickens out of the game's Goliaths, and yet you're willing to disclose your most closely held secrets? Imagine if a successful company like Toyota did the same thing. Gaaa.
Nine Innings, by Dan Okrent
The June 10, 1982 game in which the Brewers downed the Orioles 9-7 wasn't exceptional; the book it birthed, however, was. Using the game's events as a jumping-off point (Gorman Thomas striking out a mere two times, etc.), the book tackles everything from the evolution of the slider to Earl Weaver's charming temperament. Did you know Cecil Cooper has "miraculous fingers"? Thanks to Okrent, you do now.
Veeck -- As in Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck, by Bill Veeck with Ed Linn
Veeck brought us midgets at the bat, players outfitted in shorts, scoreboard sound effects and Minnie Minoso's un-retirement at age 50. He brought us Disco Demolition night, which was the closest baseball has come in recent years to prompting mobilization of the National Guard. But he also helped integrate the sport through his embrace of Larry Doby and did more to, uh, amplify the in-stadium experience than almost anyone in the game's history. The game's all-time greatest character? I say yes.
Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History, by Cait N. Murphy
I'm not as much of a know-thy-elders baseball fan as I'd like to be, so I went into this one blindly, familiar with few of its personalities beyond Christy Mathewson and Fred "Boner" Merkle. I came out of it amazed that baseball survived to see another season, what with all the greed and booze and casual racism. I mean, come on: any campaign that ends with a Cubs championship has end-of-days potential, doesn't it?
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| Jose Canseco's literary masterpiece? Not making this list. (Getty Images) |
Its tales of drinking, pill-popping, cavorting with ladies of dubious moral character and "beaver shooting" would barely rate a mention on Deadspin nowadays. But at the time of its 1971 publication, Ball Four was revolutionary, because nobody had dared speak a word about the off-field hooliganism before then. Basically, Bouton invented the sports tell-all. Meanwhile, he wrote the damn thing while he was still playing; he named names and lived to tell about it, which is an accomplishment in itself.
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life, by Richard Ben Cramer
Feeling a bit too cheery? Then check out this devastating biography of the True Yankee to whom a nation turned its lonely eyes. Turns out that Joe D. had as much in common temperamentally with Sylvia Plath as with Ted Williams, especially during the joyless last innings of his life. It presents both sides of the coin: there's the graceful, grinning Joe DiMaggio of black-and-white myth, and then there's the Joe DiMaggio who'd no sooner pick up a check than swing at a pitch off the plate. In this era of McGwire and Clemens and Sosa and Palmeiro, there's a lesson to be learned here: namely, about the danger in assigning heroic traits to individuals skilled in hitting, throwing or catching spherical projectiles.
Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe, by Sam Walker
Technically, this is a book about Fantasy baseball and not real-world baseball -- and, as old-school wunderkinds like Joe Morgan would tell us, there's a difference between the two. Nonetheless, Fantasyland sings thanks to its don't-try-this-at-home bent and the author's self-deprecation. Plus it answers the question that many long-time Fantasy groupies have wanted to ask: How, precisely, might David Ortiz react to the news you've traded his genial ass? If your significant other can't understand why you spend so much time tending to your Fantasy teams, this book should prove illuminating.
The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thompson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World, by Joshua Prager
The book's big honkin' revelation -- that the New York Giants had stolen signals during the 1951 season, which means that Thomson may have been prepped for the Branca fastball he deposited behind the left-field wall -- was aired a few years before the book's publication. What makes the fleshed-out tale so compelling is both its literary ambition (the writing is more Tom Wolfe than Tom Verducci) and its rendering of the warm friendship that blossomed between the two bound-by-history protagonists.
O Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto, edited by Tom Peyer and Hart Seely
I'm biased in including this one, as Rizzuto's dreamy, meandering soliloquies were the soundtrack to my youth. But the concept is genius: take his loopier commentaries and arrange them in verse form, then revel in the poetry within -- like this little bit of lyric magic, uttered during a Darryl Hamilton at-bat in a meaningless 1992 Brewers-Yankees clash: "They're having more snow/Out in Colorado/Which is not in Montana/But it is not far from Montana." Hey, Robert Frost never won an MVP award.
Summer of '49, by David Halberstam
My favorite from Halberstam's trilogy of baseball tomes (the other two are October 1964 and The Teammates ), if only because the 1949 season saw the game in the throes of cataclysmic change: integration, television, etc. At the same time, it featured perhaps the greatest Yankees/Red Sox pennant race in history, one that climaxed on the regular season's final day (spoiler: the Yankees won). Too, the season was played out by any number of legends: Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, DiMaggios in opposing dugouts and more. The modern-era Yankees/Red Sox rivalry feels quaint and jaunty by comparison.
We're well-acquainted with Dave Littlefield, Jim Bowden and their fellow modern-era boobs. What Blunders does is shine a light on the pratfalls mostly remembered by the fans who suffered through them (the chapter on Maury Wills' insight-free stewardship of the Mariners during the early 1980s comes across as equally hilarious and tragic). Too, the book's breezy, quick-hit approach makes it ideal to consume in small bites, whether you're on the subway or the can.
I Was Right On Time, by Buck O'Neil with Steve Wulf and David Conrads and The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America, by Joe Posnanski
I can't choose between the two. The former is one of the few books written so vividly that you can practically hear the author reciting it to you. The latter recounts a cross-country road trip that makes it abundantly clear why O'Neil was one of our national treasures (it doesn't hurt that Posnanski is to baseball writers what Prince is to musicians: the guy we all look at and think "I can't do that"). Either way, you can't go wrong.
The Bronx Zoo, by Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock
The 1978 Yankees clubhouse was like Romper Room as re-imagined by a punchy alcoholic. Forget all the bits about Graig Nettles (surly), Reggie Jackson (surlier) and Billy Martin (surliest) -- reading this book prepared me well for the moment I realized my first boss had a little Steinbrenner in him. For the lunatic-defusing strategies contained herein, I owe Sparky a big hug.
