Baseball book recommendations

sbstudley · 04-30-2005, 07:00

This time of year I enjoy reading a good baseball novel or even a biography. If anyone has a recommendation It would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

PMY · 05-02-2005, 09:45

Here are a few I've enjoyed:

If you haven't read it "The Boys of Summer" by Roger Kahn is a must read. About the golden years of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Also great golden years books, "Summer of '49" and "October 1964" both by David Halberstam.

A good book that came out last summer is "The Last Best League" by Jim Collins, about the Cape Cod League.

rdsharp · 05-02-2005, 14:22

One of my favorite is "If I Never Get Back" by Daryl Brock. It combines time travel, history, baseball and mystery. It's about a man who passes out at a railroad station and wakes up in 1869 on the same train as the original Cincinnati Reds. I just learned there is a sequel, too.

Troy Soos has written several historical baseball mysteries set in the teens with different teams, with utility man-detective Mickey Rawlings as the hero. The include Murder at Wrigley Field, Murder at Ebbots Field, and the Cincinnati Red Stalkings. Great books.

Great biographies include Robert Creamer's Babe, and Al Stump's Cobb.

sink156 · 05-02-2005, 19:23

If you like detective novels try "Double Play" by Robert B. Parker.

It combines baseball and a first person detective story.

It is about a detective hired to bodyguard Jackie Robinson during his first year with the Yankees. It uses real stories and stats from games and builds the fictional story around it. Classic Parker prose and a great read.

rdsharp · 05-03-2005, 09:35

Quote:

Originally posted by sink156
If you like detective novels try "Double Play" by Robert B. Parker.

It combines baseball and a first person detective story.

It is about a detective hired to bodyguard Jackie Robinson during his first year with the Yankees. It uses real stories and stats from games and builds the fictional story around it. Classic Parker prose and a great read.

I hope that's just a typo on your part, and not a massive error on Parker's. Robinson played for the Dodgers. The Yankees didn't have a black player until they brought up Elston Howard in 1955 -- eight years after Robinson debuted in 1947.

sink156 · 05-03-2005, 20:22

Yes it was a typo on my part. Good catch, as a baseball fan I must now beat myself about the head with a Louisville Slugger.

JaviFL · 05-04-2005, 08:04

Not fiction or biography, but I really enjoyed this one: Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, by George Will.

1865 · 05-09-2005, 06:58

Also not a novel or biography, but if you are a fan of the game I can recommend "Moneyball". Great book, very entertaining and it will change the way you look at baseball.