Rockies Magazine Asks Input
I received this email today with the suggestion it could be a good discussion on the board that could lead to input for the next Rockies Magazine.
For the August issue of Rockies Magazine, we are running a feature tentatively titled “Rockies Magazine Book Club.” In it, we will be running a list of our favorite baseball books, and there will be a number of categories, such as non-fiction, fiction, autobiographical, about a specific event(s), analytical, influence in the game and “completely biased” – books about the Rockies, or that people in or closely associated with the organization have written/helped write.
But we are a magazine of the people, and as such would like to solicit your opinion. On the most basic level, we simply want to know:
What is your favorite book about baseball?
However, if you would like to add more input, we would of course love to have it. So feel free to tell us what your top 3 or top 5 is, or if you have one selection for each of the categories above, please let us know. Of particular interest to me are the last two categories, influence in the game, and completely biased. If there are books that have been written about the club, or by people with or around the club (such as Jack Corrigan’s book) we definitely want to know.
As always, thank you in advance for your help.
Paul A. Swydan
Asst. Editor – Publications
Colorado Rockies
So do you have favorite baseball books?
I’ll need to think about the whole list, but the first book that comes to mind is when I read while growing up ‘The Boys of Summer’.
I think that book, more than anything else, made me a huge baseball fan.
The New Bill James Baseball Historical Abstract. If you love baseball history, this is the place to start!
While this won’t make your final cut, I love the book “You Gotta Have Wa” by Robert Whiting. A great look at baseball from the perspective of Japan.
We can always learn from a different perspective of what we know. Indeed, this is just that.
“The Boys of Summer’
“Ball Four”
“Fantasyland”
Book I enjoyed was Bob Feller Comes to Louisville by former outfielder John Morris. Very good book about minor league life by former No. 1 draft of Royals out of Seton Hall. Very readable, too.
Sandy Koufax, I Loved him as a pitcher when I was young. This book brought me back to those days. I felt he was the best in the early 60′s and after reading this book my feelings were confirmed. Great book great guy.
Here are three:
Geoffry C. Ward and Ken Burns “Baseball” — the PBS series was great; the book is a master complilaton of photos and stories of baseball history. Wandering through it in February is renewal.
“Shoeless Joe” by W.P.Kinsella. Fiction (it was turned into the movie “Field of Dreams”) and is much better than the film.
“I Don’t Care If I Ever Get Back” by Darryl Brock. Found this at a used book sale, and really enjoyed it. Borders on science fiction, but captivating.
This is a great survey (thanks, Tracy, for posting it).
It got me thinking about how many wonderful books that have touched on baseball that I’ve read over the years.
(Wiliam Kennedy’s “Ironweed” triolgy, which includes “Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game” has a lot of baseball woven in is an example).
Baseball is, indeed, America in so many ways. In fact and fiction. Part myth; but also very real. And obviously a trove of treasure for authors.
Tony Benjamin,
Loveland
“Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball” by George Will
“Confessions of a Baseball Purist” by Jon Miller
“Ball Four” by Jim Bouton
“Baseball America” by Donald Honig
I’d say my favorites are The New Bill James Historical Abstract, Ball Four by Jim Bouton and Moneyball by Michael Lewis. As for baseball fiction, well, I never think a fictional story can capture the drama of a real game or season.
Hey Kent,
Thanks for adding George Wills’ book, “Men at Work.”
It’s a good one, for sure.
Tony Benjamin,
Loveland
1. Don’t Let Baseball Die…Art Hill
2. Prophet of the Sandlots…Mark Winegardner
Fiction: “Long Gone” by Paul Hemphill
“Seasons Past” by Damon Rice
History: “The Cincinnati Game” by Lonnie Wheeler and John Baskin
“The Home Team” (Baseball in Baltimore) by James Bready
Specific Event: “Eight Men Out” by Eliot Asinof
3. Bleachers…Lonnie Wheeler
4. Dollar Sign on the Muscle…Kevin Kerrane
5. Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game…Jimmy Breslin
6. Bums…Peter Golenbock
Roberto Clemente: Baseball’s Last Hero.
The Brothers K by David James Duncan, if for nothing else, for the beautiful description of a strike zone.
Dave Dravecky “Comeback”
Tom Verducci “The Yankee Years”
Fiction: Shoeless Joe (yes, I agree, much better than the movie Field of Dreams); Bang the Drum Slowly (nicely evokes the golden age of baseball before my time long before it turns into a tearjerker)
Nonfiction: Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever by Satchel Paige and Stranger to the Game by Bob Gibson. Those two books taught me more about America’s racial injustice and the struggle for fairness than anything I ever learned in school.
Pure Geekery: “The Book” by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, Andy Dolphin. You can learn a lot just by reading their blog, insidethebook dot com.
“The Goose is Loose” –Goose Gossage
Great comedic insight on the lighter side of the sport.
Summerland by Micheal Chabon is one of my favorite kids books about baseball. I’ve purchased it for all of my nieces and nephews and it quickly became a family favorite.
It weaves American Folklore with baseball at a magical baseball diamond in Puget Sound. There the little leaguers discover that Coyote the Trickster first asked “Why does the pitcher have to hit?”
In battling the evil of the designated hitter, the Little Leaguers enter a parallel universe filled with creatures from folk stories. It’s a great way to teach kids why the American League has ruined the world. ;)
Okay, here is my expanded list:
Bullet Bob Comes to Louisville is a wonderful read by a former player, John Morris, a No. 1 draft pick of the Royals from Seton Hall, who gave you an inside and strong look at life in the minor leagues.
Don Baylor by Don Baylor with Claire Smith, which opens up the life of Don, showing the depth of the man who in junior high school volunteered to integrate Austin schools, was the first black athlete to play at Stephen F. Austin High School and was the first black to be offered a full ride to play football for Darrel Royal at Texas.
A Whole Different Ball Game The Sport and Business of Baseball by Marvin Miller is provides excellent insight into how the Players Association evolved and gained such strength. It is a much more honest version than Bowie’s book.
Dollar Sign on the Muscle by Kevin Kerrane is very solid on the demands of scouting.
Collision at Home Plate is a perfect insight into the Giamatti-Rose decision.
Veeck as in Wreck by Bill Veeck is an old book with great insight into one of the more promoter friendly men in the history of the game.
Innings Ago written by Jack Etkin deals with the life Negro League players and minor league players who passed through Kansas City.
Eight Men Out by Asminov is a very good read on the Black Sox Scandal
Say It Ain’t So Joe! by Donald Gropman provides insight into Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Babe Ruth Caught in a Snowstorm by John Alexander is a wonderful fiction book about a man who runs an amateur team and has a paper weight on his desk with Babe Ruth in it. When you shake the paper weight there is a snowstorm.
“Heart of the Game,” just published this spring, by S.L. Price is a beautifully written story of Mike Coolbaugh, who was killed by a line drive while coaching first base for Double-A Tulsa two years ago, and Tino Sanchez, who hit the fatal line drive. This is a poignant tale about the game’s strong pull and the hopes and disappointments it doles out to two career minor leaguers.
A few other favorites are “Eight Men Out,” Eliot Asinof’s detailed account of the Black Sox Scandal and “The Iowa Baseball Confederacy” and “Shoeless Joe,” by W.P. Kinsella. The latter was made into “Field of Dreams,” which was a very good movie, but the book is much better.
The same with “The Natural,” by Bernard Malamud, where the happy ending given the movie treatment replaces something darker in the book.
For a history of the game, nothing beats the three volumes of ‘Baseball’ by Harold Seymour. Wonderfully researched and well written.
‘The Glory of Their Times’ by Lawrence Ritter and ‘We Played the Game’ by Danny Peary and ‘Baseball Between the Lines’ by Donald Honig are each outstanding examples of baseball tales as told by the players. These oral histories give us a glimpse into the player’s world through their eyes. Funny and insightful.
As for a little baseball magic, try ‘The Celebrant’ by Eric Rolfe Greenberg. Engaging, well researched baseball tale. Truly worth the read.
Influence on the game:
Bill James, Baseball Abstract, 1982 through 1988.
Those who’ve followed in him footsteps have at times taken the reliance on stats and the irreverence to naive and embarrassing extremes, but these books were groundbreaking and amazing. James’s wit kept the focus on the analysis rather than the stats per se.
Bill James, The Bill James Historical Abstract (the original version).
This one was different in tone from the early abstracts and the later revision of the historical abstract. This is the side of Bill James people rarely appreciate–the love not just for stat-based analysis, but all of baseball history. His player rankings were based as much on informed opinion as statistical systems, an approach I found far superior to his win shares-based 2nd version.
History:
Glory of Their Times, Lawrence Ritter
This is kind of a standard. Oral histories of a number of Ty Cobb’s contemporaries.
(Very) short fiction:
“Five Ives,” Roy Blount, Jr.
Jack Keefe in the era of amps.
Best Reference Books:
The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, Paul Dickson.
Dictionary dedicated to the rich baseball lexicon. If you’ve been following the game a while, you might feel like such a book is unneeded, but it’s unique. Check for it in your local library.
The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, Rob Neyer, Bill James
Neyer, James and research assistants combed through countless numbers of old guides and the like to catalog the main pitches of pitchers through baseball history. If you ever wonder, “What did [pre-internet age player] throw,” this book is a good place to start.
Macmillan’s Baseball Encyclopedia and Total BaseballAlas, they have finally been superceded by online resources such as baseball reference and retrosheet, and not just due to the daily updates. But man, were these books amazing in their day.
The soul of baseball : a road trip through Buck O’Neil’s America by Joe Posnanski.
Glory of Their Times : The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter
Prophet of the Sandlots by Mark Winegardner stands out among non-fiction baseball books for me.
Among fiction, David James Duncan’s The Brothers K, while peripherally about baseball, remains my favorite book and has some of the better baseball stories I’ve ever read. As C Thistle noted above, the passage about the strike zone is something to behold. Also, the story of how one brother in a family of baseball-playing brothers deals with his own lack of baseball skills rings very true.
From Kinsella, Iowa Baseball Confederacy and Shoeless Joe make the list, as does his collection of short stories The Thrill of the Grass. The final story in that book is my favorite of everything he has written. Also, there’s a collection called Writing Baseball that came out in the mid ’90s that pulls together some of the better stories.
OK, I know this guy had people who either loved him or hated him, but “The Umpire Strikes Back” by former AL umpire (back where there were AL and NL umpires) Ron Luciano. I read this in High School (many years ago) and some of the stories he tells make you stop reading because you’re laughing so hard. You could argue that he didn’t take the game seriously, but that’s what I like about it, he shows it should still be fun. His exchanges with Earl Weaver are just classic.
I think Kent (on an above thread) mentioned Jon Miller’s book. I liked that one as well.
Also, “I was right on Time” by Buck O’Neil, (someone may have mentioned this). I was lucky enough to meet Mr. O’Neil and get his signature in the book. Listening to him talk was an amazing experience. You could tell he truly loved this game and was an amazing human being.
Non-Fiction (Rockies): Mile High Madness: A Year With the Colorado Rockies by Bob Kravitz.
In this book, Bob Kravitz tells the story of how Denver recieved an expansion team as well as a detailed account of the Rockies first season. Some of the more enjoyable moments in the book are the stories pertaining to Don Zimmer the bench coach and young Curtis “Psycho” Leskanic.
Non-Fiction: The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship by David Halberstam.
-Best Rockies book: Fat Pitch by Jan Sumner
also Tales from the Colorado Rockies by Tony DeMarco
-Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
-Stolen Season by David Lamb – journey through America and baseball’s minor leagues
-My Life in Baseball: The True Record By Ty Cobb with Al Stump
Wow, this is great! I now have an expanded reading list! And I didn’t even know there were books about the Rockies. Especially can’t wait to look up Kravitz’s – what a bummer when he left the Rocky – and the one by Halberstam.
I have been laughing my head off (or nodding in delighted agreement, or expanding my knowledge) reading “Bunts” by George Will – a compilation of essays and columns. Loved “The Boys of Summer” – perhaps the quintessential portrait of the game; respectfully disagree that “Shoeless Joe” was better than the movie Field of Dreams.
The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam
The lives and friendships of Ted Williams, Dom Dimaggio, Johnny Pesky, & Bobby Doerr
A couple other books: A False Spring by Pat Jordan, Good Enough to Dream by Roger Kahn and Box Socials by Kinsella. Box Socials is less about baseball than some of Kinsella’s other books, but is my favorite of his. Good Enough to Dream is an older book of Kahn’s about his buying the Utica Blue Sox in the mid-1980s. It’s been years since I read it, but I remember enjoying it. Of course, I was probably about 12 years old at the time, so a book about buying a baseball team, any team, I would have enjoyed back then as it was my own dream. Here’s my Top 10 at RMI.
Memories of Summer: Roger Kahn – a remarkable treatise as to why baseball is irrevocably bonded to the American soul.
Men at Work: George F. Will – an excellent primer for any fan wanting to take their understanding of the game to the next level.
9 Innings: Daniel Okrent – a sort of uber-color commentary over the course of one “typical” 9 inning game.
The Duke of Flatbush by Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, and Bill Gilbert – A great story of playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, living near the stadium, and then the move west. A lot of great stories from baseball in the 1950′s and 1960′s and an easy read.
Rockies book: Tales From the Colorado Rockies – Tony DeMarco
Autobiography: Zim: A Baseball Life – Don Zimmer
Overall: The Summer Game – Roger Angell
The Boys of Summer – Roger Kahn
Ron Darling’s new book, The Complete Game, gets inside the head of a pitcher (not just Darling, but others too and their managers and pitching coaches) for strategy and mindset by referring to actual games from his time with the Mets, the A’s and with Yale. Highly recommended.
I have to be a contrarian here. My favorite baseball book — though it really qualifies as a longish short story or novella — is The Natural. The book is far darker than the movie, and I remember thinking that the prose was lovely.
Honorable mention goes to Men at Work by George Will.
I’m going to echo the votes for “The Glory of Their Times.” Few books about baseball have taught me as much about the game’s history as that one. For bios, Robert Creamer’s “Babe: The Legend Comes to Life” and Leigh Montville’s “Ted Williams” Biography of an American Hero” are outstanding. Halberstam’s “Teamates” is great, too, even for a Boston-hating Yanks fan.
Swank–you sold your soul in denver. sox forever!
My favorite baseball book, although I forget the author, was called Southpaw and was just a no frills look at a players love for the game. Another one I really liked was Cal Ripken’s book, which was so instrumental in helping me to manage a winning softball team.
That being said I’m going to school to become a graphic designer and really enjoy the way your magazine is designed and laid out, who knows maybe when I’m done I can come work for you guys!
If you enjoy reading about a specific player, I recommend “Clemente,” by David Maraniss.
Roberto Clemente, a right fielder, played 18 seasons in MLB from 1955 to 1972, all with the Pittsburgh Pirates. A Puerto Rican, he paved the way for Latin American players to play in the MLB, although he suffered from racial discrimination from the media and some fans.
Clemente was dedicated to helping others and died in an airplane crash on New Year’s Eve 1972 enroute to Nicaragua to deliver supplies to earthquake victims. “Clemente” offers insight into the life and views of a complex, graceful hero.