As we head for the most exciting part of the season, if able to pry oneself away from the games of August and September, some idle time can be well spent reading any or all of these baseball-themed books. Idleguy.com salutes the authors of these works with inclusion into our PDF library.
Invariably, any compilation of great sports writing has Bouton's seminal work near the top of the list. A major league pitcher for the New York Yankees, Seattle Pilots, Houston Astros, and Atlanta Braves between 1962 and 1978, Bouton's diary that became Ball Four chronicled his experiences over the course of the 1969 season with the Pilots and during his two-week stint with triple-A Vancouver in April, and after his trade to the Houston Astros in late August.
Ball Four is an honest insider's look at professional sports teams and players, revealing much of the off-the-field side of baseball life: petty jealousies, raunchy clubhouse jokes, drunken nights on the road, and rampant drug use by players, mostly encouraged by coaches and front offices. Upon its publication, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn called Ball Four "detrimental to baseball", and tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying that the book was a work of fiction. Bouton refused to deny any of the book's revelations and Ball Four emerged as the model for tell-all sports journalism.
The headlines proclaimed the 1919 fix of the World Series and attempted cover-up as "the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America!" First published in 1963, Eight Men Out has become a timeless classic. Eliot Asinof reconstructed the entire story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the World Series, losing to an inferior Cincinnati squad. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial.
Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to baseball and sport, only to be rocked by the scandal. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this is a compelling slice of American history in the aftermath of World War I and at the cusp of the Roaring Twenties.
Kahn's introspective peering into the personalities and lives of the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950's, including Jackie Robinson, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese and many others who grew up playing sandlot ball on farms and fields and found themselves one day on the diamonds of the major leagues.
The Dodgers of the Robinson-Brooklyn era were one of the most exciting clubs ever fielded, from breaking down the color barrier to losing and winning the World Series. Kahn, a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and had the good fortune to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribunewrites passionately about the American Dream, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster. The stories of the players during their heyday and afterwards are told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and heartfuelt devotion to the great game.
Pratchett's books have always been about character, with plot taking a back seat, and Going Postal is no exception. Our Hero is Moist von Lipwig, a conman who is hanged as the book opens for a long list of inventive and profitable crimes.
Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans. Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. - John Moe
A deep portrait of New York City in 1977, The Bronx Is Burning is the story of two epic battles: the fight between Yankee Reggie Jackson and team manager Billy Martin, and the battle between Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch for the city's mayorship. Buried beneath these parallel conflicts - one for the soul of baseball, the other for the soul of the city - was the subtext of race. Deftly intertwined by journalist Jonathan Mahler, these braided Big Apple narratives reverberate to reveal a year that also saw the opening of Studio 54, the acquisition of the New York Post by Rupert Murdoch, a murderer dubbed the and "Son of Sam, and " the infamous blackout, and the evolution of punk rock. As Koch defeated Cuomo, and as Reggie Jackson rescued a team racked with dissension, 1977 became a year of survival and also of hope.
Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues by Jim Bouton (1970)
Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof (1963)
The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn (1972)
Moneyball by Michael Lewis (2003)
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning by Jonathon Mahler (2005)
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Here are some more baseball books you might find on eBay, Amazon, in used book stores, or as pdf versions:
"Catcher in the Wry" by Bob Uecker and Mickey Herskowitz - Baseball's funny man, Bob Uecker, delivers a generous assortment of mostly true baseball yarns.
"Beyond the Sixth Game" by Peter Gammons - an insider's look at lovable losers, the Boston Red Sox of the mid-1970s.
"Veeck As In Wreck" by Bill Veeck with Ed Linn - Memoir of one of baseball's most eccentric promoters and executives.
"Late Innings: A Baseball Companion" by Roger Angell - Inside story on some of baseball's great players by a writer who knows and loves the game.
"The Bronx Zoo" by Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock - Lyle, a reliever for the Yankees during the turbulent 1978 season, recalls the squabbles between Reggie Jackson, manager Billy Martin and owner George Steinbrenner, and the eventual rise to the top as the Yankees made history, winning their second straight World Series over the languid Los Angeles Dodgers.
"The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty: The Game, the Team, and the Cost of Greatness" by Buster Olney - An in-depth look at the Yankees of the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the complete cast of characters - Derek Jeter, Joe Torre, Mariano Rivera, et. al. - details the rise and fall of one of the most celebrated teams of all time and how it came crashing down.
"Wait Till Next Year" by Doris Kearns Goodwin - One of America''s pre-eminent historians, Goodwin's memoir about growing up a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers will warm the heart of even the most cynical sportsman. It's written with all the passion and intensity of the best sportswriters, by a woman who simply loves the game.
These are only a few suggestions. The list of baseball non-fiction books is lengthy. After all, it is America's game, one which people love to talk about, read about, and write about, full of opinion and nuance, there's something there for everyone.
For movie buffs, must-see films include adaptations of a few of the featured books from this month, including the emotive "Eight Men Out", and the insightful "Moneyball" with manager Billy Beane played smartly by Brad Pitt.
A few others include "Bull Durham" starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins; "Field of Dreams" with Costner, James Earl Jones, and a stunning performance by the late Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe Jackson; "A League of Their Own" stars Genna Davis, Tom Hanks and none other than Madonna.
Some older classics are:
There are so many great baseball movies, you could spend a solid month watching them.
