Rockies Magazine Wants Your Input

Okay, probably doesn’t count as a baseball book. My second choice would probably be Game of Shadows, which actually is a baseball book.

by Micheal Shaara the same guy who wrote Killer Angels a great Civil war book. A great short read. I would also recomend anything by Micheal’s son Jeff Shaara who has written many great books about American history.

• Ball Four by Jim Bouton

• The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams

• The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

• Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig by Jonathan Eig

• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

Best instructional book – The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams

Best Fiction – You Know Me Al by Ring Lardner

Best Autobiagraphy – My Turn at Bat by Ted Williams

Another great book is The Glory of Their Times.

Which would also be one of my favorites…

The Umpire Strikes Back by Ron Luciano…really hilarious look into the characters of baseball…from a guy who seemed to instigate a lot of mayhem, an easy buy awesome read. And there are two sequels, to boot!

Watching Baseball Smarter by Zack Hample- The man’s a genius. Most educational book of anything I’ve ever read. Mixes his knowledge of baseball with some humor, making for an excellent and easy read.

Planet of the Umps: A Baseball Life from Behind the Plate by Ken Kaiser with David Fisher – Kaiser is absolutely hilarious in this book, which provides insight into what being a minor league umpire is really like.

Tales from the Colorado Rockies by Tony DeMarco – What can I say? It’s a Rockies book. Not to say that’s the only reason I like it. It’s very well writen, too.

Confessions of a She-Fan by Jane Heller – Yes, it’s a Yankee book. But more than it being a Yankees book, it paints an amazing picture of fans who live and die for their team.

The Baseball Economist – JC Bradbury
The Book – Tom Tango et al
Baseball Between the Numbers – Jonah Keri, James Click, et al

3 Nights in August - Buzz Bissinger/Tony LaRussa
Crazy 08 – Cait Murphy
The Boys of Summer - Roger Kahn
The Duke of Havana – Ray Sanchez/Steve Fainaru
The Science of Hitting – Joe Dimmagio
The Mick – Mickey Mantle
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy – Jane Leavy

I’m currently reading: The Samurai Way of Baseball: The Impact of Ichiro and the New Wave from Japan – Robert Whiting

I Never Had it Made by Jackie Robinson.

for Ball Four. It’s pretty tame for what’s come since, but it was really the first to open the door to a major league clubhouse. It was also damn funny.

Sparky Lyle’s “Bronx Zoo” is a fun read along the same lines.

Fiction-wise, I’d vote for The Natural by Bernard malamud

seems to inspire many more interesting books than any other sport. I think I can count on one hand the number of really good football & basketball books I’ve ever read. Some favs:

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract – No baseball fan should be without it.

Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof – Classic account of the 1919 “Black Sox”

Anything by Roger Angell

The Answer Is Baseball by Luke Salisbury – I think it’s now out-of-print, but a charming excursion into baseball trivia.

Of course, my favorite baseball-related novel (and apparently also one of Rox Girl’s) is
The Universal Baseball Assoction, J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover

“The Pitch That Killed” – Mike Sowell

A great look back at the careers and lives of Ray Chapman and Carl Mays, as well as the fallout from the pitch Mays threw that fatally beaned Chapman in 1920.

“The Bad Guys Won!” – Jeff Pearlman

Yeah, Pearlman’s not much beloved by the internets, but I enjoyed this book about the 1986 Mets. What a wild bunch.

Rob Neyer’s “Big Book of….”

The big book of Lineups is a bit outdated, but the ones about Blunders and Legends are really fun reads.

And as fiction goes… I’d put “The Southpaw” by Mark Harris up against anything ever written. “Bang The Drum Slowly” was the Harris baseball book that got made into a movie, but “The Southpaw”, the first of I think four books about Henry Wiggen, was by far the best.

I could be mis-remembering, but it seemed to me the original was different in tone from the early abstracts and the later revision of the historical abstract. His player rankings were based as much on informed opinion as by statistical systems, an approach I found far superior to his win shares-based 2nd version. A lot of sabermetric analysis veers towards a type of positivism and for a few years there, James seemed to be responding to this trend in the new “field” by taking a wider approach. Alas, he seems to have backslid a bit.

Whichever version, these are incredible one volume histories/analyses of the game, and they show the side of Bill James people rarely appreciate–the love not just for stat-based analysis, but all of baseball history and the stories from the game.

I think the first nationally published (Ballantine, I think) edition was the 1982. James wrote these annually until ‘88. They were groundbreaking and entertaining—James wasn’t the only one doing this stuff in the late 70’s/early 80’s, but he was the most entertaining writer and thus helped bring an audience to the new concepts.

While some of the stuff in them is dated, they remain fun to read.

Bronx Zoo by Sparky Lyle. Crazy behind the scene of the 1978 Yankees. I just reread it not too long ago, and it stood up over time

If I never get Back by Darryl Brock. Fiction. A guy goes back in time to 1869 and the Cincinnati Reds start as a professional team. Interesting take at the beginnings of baseball. The romance was a little weird.

The Natural by Malamud was good, but the movie I saw first, might have been even better. The book and movie are very different.

Satchel Sez, By David Sterry. This was a very funny if quick read. I love Satchel Paige. (technically, I’m not 100% sure this is the book, but I read one about Satch a few years back that I really liked, and I think it was this one)

Cobb by Al Stump (Tremendous, tremendous biography of Ty Cobb. The most complete biography of Cobb ever.)

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn (It’s been said, but I’ll give it another vote)

As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires by Bruce Weber (Awesome book, just came out this year. Weber attends umpire school, umps for 3 years, and interviews nearly 50 MLB umpires for the book. I would highly recommend it to anyone that loves the game.)

“In the best interests of baseball? : the revolutionary reign of Bud Selig” by Andrew Zimbalist. I came to this book with biases about Comisar Selig (maybe I still have biases) and Zimbalist, but found it an interesting history of the commissioner’s office and Bud.

Now Batting, Number…: The Mystique, Superstition, and Lore of Baseball’s Uniform Numbers by Jack Looney?

It looks like a fascinating book for baseball junkies. Think I’ll try to find a copy.