Baseball Book Survey

The following document has been posted regularly on the Usenet group rec.sport.baseball for the past eight years. It is updated several times a year.

Here we go:

This survey is not intended to be an all-encompasing review of baseball books. There are no how-to books, no rule books, no books with an emphasis on photographs and/or art, no fiction, and no poetry. What this survey does try and cover is a selection of the best books which cover various angles of baseball itself from an analytic perspective. I have tried to come with books that cover a extremely wide variety of baseball topics, including general histories, specific histories, biographies and autobiographies of both historical and more recent personalities, economics, labor-management struggles, scouting, defense, statistical analysis, the minor leagues, Japanese baseball, the negro leagues, broadcasting, etc.


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 and Benjamin Rader's Baseball: A History of America's Game are both solid one volume histories of baseball.

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.

The Unforgettable Season by G.H. Fleming - a chronicle of the 1908 National League pennant race, a race which many have called the most exciting ever.


BIOGRAPHY:

Charles Alexander's Ty Cobb, John McGraw, and Rogers Hornsby are 3 of the 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 and Pennant Race by Jim Brosnan - the first real baseball "diaries" 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

Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, by Donald Hall and Dock Ellis, is a highly original and thought provoking book that filters the offbeat personality of Dock Ellis through the vision of his very talented co-author.

Diz, by Robert Gregory, is an exhaustive and always absorbing biography of one of the most entertaining pitchers of all time, Dizzy Dean, and at the same time provides a perceptive look at baseball during the era of the Great Depression.

Another entertaining pitcher is demythologized in Mark Ribowsky's new Don't Look Back: Satchel Paige in the Shadows of Baseball, a comprehensive biography of the player some consider the Negro Leagues' answer to Babe Ruth as a star.

Cobb, by Al Stump, is a less scholarly but more probing biography of the great ballplayer and justifiably despised person Ty Cobb was than Charles Alexander's earlier biography of the controversial star.

Walter Johnson, Baseball's Big Train is an amazingly comprehensive biography of perhaps the greatest pitcher of all time by his own grandson, Henry W. Thomas. The book was the winner of the 1995 Casey Award, which is given to the best new baseball book every year.

The Only Way I Know, by Cal Ripken and Mike Bryan, is the intelligent and thoughtful story of one of the most admired players in America.


BASEBALL LABOR AND ECONOMICS:

Andrew Zimbalist's recent Baseball and Billions is the best overall survey of baseball economics; it is not only well researched and full of solid analysis, but also highly readable. Gerald Scully's The Business of Major League Baseball is a more scholarly overview of the economics of MLB. 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. Bowie Kuhn's Hardball is well-written and valuable for its portrayal of the relationships between owners and commissioners, though other parts of the book are badly marred by Kuhn's inability to deal with reality. James Miller's The Baseball Business: Pursuing Pennants & Profits in Baltimore is a fascinating look at the workings of one major league organization. Never Just A Game: Players, Owners and American Baseball to 1920, by Robert F Burk, is a revealing look at the business side of baseball during the sport's early days. John Helyar's Lords Of The Realm is an interesting though overly gossipy look at the history (primarily recent history) of the behavior of baseball ownership.


STATISTICAL AND SABERMETRIC ANALYSIS

Pete Palmer and John Thorn's The Hidden Game of Baseball is the best overview of sabermetrics and the application of statistical analysis towards baseball, though some studies that are presented by the book have major faults. The Diamond Appraised by Craig Wright is a fascinating work of applied sabermetrics (despite the small parts of the book written by Tom House), and probably the best example of the spirit of sabermetrics available. The Bill James Historical Abstract is a fascinating look at the evolution and history of baseball and its players that is partly accomplished through the use of sabermetric methods. Bill James' This Time Let's Not Eat The Bones is an uneven survey of James' pre-1989 work.


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. Scouting Reports, by Stan Hart, provides a window into how scouts evaluate and rate prospects by presenting many original scouting reports on a variety of mostly familiar players.


THE MINOR LEAGUES:

There is a paucity of good literature on the minor leagues. Robert Obojski'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. David Lamb's recent Stolen Season is a wonderful travelogue through both the substance and the spirit of the minor leagues. The previously mentioned Roger Kahn's Good Enough To Dream is an enjoyable account of Kahn's season as an owner of an independent minor league team.


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, and is being reprinted in an expanded edition last spring. Robert Petersen's groundbreaking Only The Ball Was White, first published in 1970, remains the definitive book on the history of the Negro Leagues and their players. John Holway's Voices From The Great Black Baseball Leagues is an engrossing work of oral history featuring the memories of many Negro League participants. The Negro Leagues Book, a recent publication of SABR edited by Dick Clark and Larry Lester, is the most complete assemblage of information on the Negro Leagues ever put together, with rosters, statistics, a player register, etc. The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, by James A. Riley, is an equally monumental compendium of information on over 4,000 players from the Negro Leagues.

The Negro League Baseball Online Archives can be found on the Web at http://www.infi.net/~moxie/nlb/nlb.html


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. The Tropic of Baseball, by Rob Ruck, is a comprehensive look at baseball in the Carribean with a focus on why the Dominican Republic has been so successful in producing ballplayers. Sugarball: The American Dream, The Dominican Dream provides an excellent history of baseball in the Dominican Republic. Diamonds of the North, by William Hubert, is a solid overview of the story of Canadian Baseball.


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. His latest is Cracking The Show, which covers the years 1989-1993. 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, The National Pasttime, edited by John Thorn, and The Perfect Game, edited by Mark Alvarez, are all 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. Smith's more recent The Storytellers is a valuable collection of stories as told by many of the great baseball broadcasters. 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 Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, which is available from Baseball America, is a comprehensive source for information about the minor leagues in the 20th century. The Minor League Register, also from Baseball America, provides career statistics (although the offensive statistics unfortunately do not include walks) for hundreds of minor league stars. The Ballplayers, edited by Mike Shatzkin, contains biographical information about every player who has ever played in the majors. The Biographical History of Baseball, by Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella, provides slightly more extensive biographical information about over 1500 individuals who have made an impact on baseball. The Home Run Encyclopedia, put together by SABR, is an exhaustive guide to all the home runs that have been hit in baseball history. The Great Encyclopedia of 19th-Century Major League Baseball, by David Nemec, is the most complete compilation of information on 19th century baseball ever imagined.

A Total Baseball web site can be found at http://www.totalbaseball.com .

BALLPARKS:

Diamonds: The Evolution of the Ballpark, by Michael Gershman, is a brilliant overview of the history and development of the places in which major league baseball has been played. Phillip Lowry's Green Cathedrals is a solid look at the features of all the individual major league parks, past and present,but is marred by too many factual errors. 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.

An excellent site on ballparks can be found at http://www.ballparks.com


WOMEN AND BASEBALL:

Women At Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, by Barbara Gregorich, is a full and satisfying examination of how women have participated in baseball from the late nineteenth century through today. Susan Johnson's When Women Played Hardball is an informative look back at the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League through oral history.


PUBLICATIONS WITH BOOK REVIEWS:

Unfortunately, both the SABR Review of Books, and its successor, the Cooperstown Review, both of which provided reviews of a wide range of baseball books, are no longer published. Back issues may be worth seeking out for reviews of many baseball books from recent years. NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Social Science Perspectives is published bi-annually and features a large number of reviews of baseball books in each edition in addition to other interesting articles.


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.

Mark Okkonen's Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century is a comprehensive and colorful history of the uniforms of major league baseball.

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.

Baseball And The American Legal Mind, edited by Spencer Waller, Neil Cohen and Paul Finkelman, is an impressively comprehensive collection of both legal documents related to cases involving baseball and legal analysis of baseball.

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

David Falkner's Nine Sides of the Diamond is an interesting look at the art of defense.

The Baseball Draft, available from Baseball America, is a complete look at the results of the annual draft and some of the best draft stories.

Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is an absorbing look at the history of baseball managers and their strategies. James' earlier The Politics of Glory is an entertaining look at how the Hall of Fame works and who should be in the Hall of Fame that makes many interesting sidetrips (The book has been retitled Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame in its trade paperback edition).

Daniel Okrent's Nine Innings is a sometimes fascinating look at the minute intracacies of a single baseball game. (I feel obligated to note that reactions to this book vary widely - Some people regard it as a masterpiece, while others find it exasperating. No other book on this list recieves such wildly divergent reviews) A somewhat similar book is Pure Baseball, by Keith Hernandez and Mike Bryan, which examines the intracacies of two "average" baseball games.

Everything Baseball is a unique resource which attempts to list every major baseball-related film, television and radio program, piece of artwork, song, poem, and work of fiction (At this point, it's a bit out of date, though).

Ted Williams' Hit List, by Ted Williams and Jim Prime, is a sometimes enlightening (though occassionally exasperating) look at how the greatest hitter of all time rates other hitters from both the past and the present.

Baseball: An Illustrated History, by Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward, is the comprehensive and colorful companion to the exhaustive (though somewhat error prone) PBS series Baseball.

The Way Baseball Works, by Dan Gutman, is a suprisingly thoughtful and very well-illustrated look at what the title implies. The book covers everything from the design of equipment to the physics of fielding to the various levels of baseball organizations.

Brooklyn's Dodgers, by Carl E. Prince, is a through and fascinating examination of the relation between the Brooklyn and its Dodgers in the years after World War II.

ON CD-ROM

The Bill James Baseball Encyclopedia is the best source of historical statistics on cd-rom. However, it is expensive, and it does not completely satisfy users who want many advanced search and retrieve functions. The cd is produced each year by Miller Associates.

The cd-rom version of the book How Baseball Works is somewhat frustrating to use but does include some interesting demonstrations and presentations.

To Part 2 of the Baseball Book Survey
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June 15, 1997

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