Baseball for a bookworm

[kurt_messick]

Okay, I am beginning to get interested in baseball.

So, what should I read? What should I see? What will bring me basically up to speed in time for the season? Educate me.

[quasar]

Do you want books to help you learn the rules? The history? Just great baseball stories?

The Boys of Summer is one of the most well known and IMO one of the best baseball books ever written. It chronicles the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950's. In general Roger Kahn's books are quite good.

Eight Men Out is also good, covering the Black Sox scandal of 1919. There's also a wonderful movie version with the same title.

Sandy Koufax' autobiography, simply called Koufax is one of my favorites. There's also a new biography of Koufax with the same title which I haven't read.

Ken Burns produced a PBS series on the history of Baseball which was quite good. There's a companion book I've heard is excellent but it's well out of my price range (I think it was $60 when it first came out, possibly even more) so I haven't read it myself.

One of my favorite books is The Physics of Baseball but unless you like physics and math you probably won't care for it.

There are also several other wonderful books about the Brooklyn Dodgers and also other excellent biographies of players.

As for movies, I highly recommend It Happens Every Spring. It perfectly captures the spirit of baseball and being a fan, as does Damn Yankees which has the added bonus of wonderful songs and Ray Walston. Just don't expect hard-hitting documentaries.

I already mentioned Ken Burns' Baseball and Eight Men Out. The Jackie Robinson Story is also excellent, as is the HBO series When it Was a Game.

One last note - you may want to get the CD Baseball's Greatest Hits. There are some baseball songs there that span generations and can really give you a feel for how baseball interacted with society and for some of the impact it had on fans.

[soxfan[$]]

Kurt, I thought you were trying to reduce your reading pile.

Anyway, Janice's already mentioned some good titles. Here are a couple more for you:

The Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball by Leonard Koppett is a pretty good overview of the game, on and off the field. I think this is now in its 3rd edition.

Men at Work by George Will concentrates on the myriad decisions that go into pitching, fielding, hitting, and managing, mostly by talking to the men who do it for a living.

Roger Angell's written many, many essays, stories, etc. on baseball (about games, players, etc.). Anything by him is bound to be good. And I don't say that just because he's a Red Sox fan, though it certainly helps.

Ailsa

[kurt_messick]

Great suggestions. I'm already seeking out movies (as, with no cable, when I watch television at home, it tends to be video rentals). I'm tracking a used copy of Burn's companion book to the PBS series, and can check the series out from the public library.

The other reading suggestions are great -- there is so much possible, I wanted to get a good narrowing of the field. I knew of George Will's book (having read other of his writing) and will look for that too. I know the rules fairly well, and don't need stats books, as I'm not great at memorising such things in any case. But biographies and histories are good, to give me an introduction to the game (not having grown up with baseball, I have to re-create that knowledge artificially).

I saw that the Baseball Hall of Fame has an opening for the Education Director. Hmmmm -- possible career move? I could be a chaplain in Cooperstown...

[theeye]

I'm a complete non-sports fan and essentially sports-illiterate.

However, I have read one very interesting essay on baseball. It's by Steven Jay Gould and it's in one of his many collections of essays from Natural History. I'll see if I can find which one it's in.

I definitely recommend the essay -- and it comes packaged in a really nice collection.

Edited to note that I found the volume: it's Full House. Read it. You'll like it.

[kurt_messick]

In general, I like Stephen Jay Gould. I've not got that volume on my shelf, but will seek it out.

[erik_kosberg]

There are already several fine suggestions here. I’d add Thomas Boswell’s How Life Imitates the World Series, sadly out of print.

[quasar]

Stephen Jay Gould is a big Yankees fan and quite knowledgeable about baseball. He is also one of the featured speakers in Ken Burns' series. A funny story:

SJG and my mom went to high school together at Jamaica High School in Queens. They graduated in 1958 and were the co-editors of the school yearbook and friendly if not friends. My mom was the world's biggest Brooklyn Dodgers fan and, as I already mentioned, SJG is a diehard Yankees fan. These two breeds did not mix well.

My mom has a copy of the 1958 Jamaica High yearbook with a typically erudite SJG message: "Da Dodgers is Dead! Da Dodgers is Dead!" referring of course to the fact that the Dodgers had just moved to L.A.

When I was in college I went to a SJG lecture. Afterwards I waited in line to speak to him with explicit instructions from my mother. You see, the Yankees were in the midst of several terrible seasons. So I walked up to SJG and said "Da Yankees are Dead, Da Yankees are Dead"

True story. It was really interesting to hear his recollections of high school in Ken Burns' production, particularly as I happened to watch it with my mom and hear her side of the same stories.

Janice

[mrisch[$]]

Someone else said this, but Men at Work by George Will is fantastic.

[Joubert[$]]

Originally posted by erik_kosberg
There are already several fine suggestions here. I’d add Thomas Boswell’s How Life Imitates the World Series, sadly out of print.

Any of Boswell's books are excellent reads. How Life is usually available on eBay and Half for only a few books. He's since published more collections of columns. We're lucky enough to have him as the hometown columnist, and I know I read one of his pieces aloud at the breakfast table at least twice a month.

Very accessible and extremely bright. Did you guys know that he worked on a new all encompassing statistic back in the 1980s called Total Average? Baseball mags and games will often calculate the total average since it not only incorporates hitting but baserunning. The formula:

(((1B + (2Bx2) + (3Bx3) + (HRx4)) + HP + BB + SB) * CS) / ((AB - H) + CS + DP).

[Joubert[$]]

Perhaps the best piece of baseball fiction I've ever read will be enjoyed by fans and history buffs alike: Daryl Brock's If I Never Get Back, the story of a baseball fan who Connecticut Yankees his way back into Cincinnati ca. 1870. There, the Red Stockings are about to become baseball's first national barnstormers (true) and also reel off 130 straight wins (also true). There's an IRA story mixed in along with Mark Twain and a love story to boot, but Brock absolutely adores the game.

[kurt_messick]

All this sounds fascinating and wonderful. I have my work cut out for me...

[CurtisEdmonds]

After you finish reading all this wonderful stuff, please be sure to check out Seasons in Hell , by Mike Shropshire, about the 1973-75 Texas Rangers, for information on the dark side of the game. Absolutely the funniest thing I have ever read.

I am way behind in my baseball reading, but please check out The Catcher was a Spy if ever you have the opportunity.

[kurt_messick]

I'm keeping a list.

[soxfan[$]]

Malamud's The Natural is also pretty good. I haven't seen the movie, so I can't recommend that either way (I heard they changed a lot of things).

[kurt_messick]

I have seen the movie, but haven't read the book. In fact, I reviewed the movie some while ago.

I'm off to Borders tonight with a gift certificate in hand.

[quasar]

The book and the movie are quite different but they are both wonderful.

Janice who needs to add The Natural to her DVD wishlist