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Six Books

Yancy Street Gang Feb 23 2006 10:26 AM

The UMDB has had Amazon.com links to the same six books for years now, and prompted by a promise to the publisher of Pedro, Carlos, and Omar, (in exchange for a free advance copy of the book) I've decided that it may be time to revise this list. I'm open to suggestions. Here are the "ground rules": 1. The books have to be about baseball, and currently in print. 2. There will be six books, and Pedro, Carlos, and Omar will be one of them. 3. I'd prefer not to include works of fiction or statistical analysis, or books that are glorified lists. (Like Baseball's Greatest Shortstops, if such a title exists.) I like to recommend the kinds of books that I like to read: books about personalities or events. 4. I'm open to retaining links to one or more of the current books. So please, suggest the five books (in addition to Pedro... that YOU would link to, in accordence with the above standards. This isn't a vote, just a request for suggestions. Since I haven't been doing nearly as much baseball reading as I used to, I'm sure that there are a bunch of worthy books out there that I might easily overlook. (And if you tell me WHY you like a particular book, all the better!) Thank you! We recommend the following great baseball books from Amazon.com Veeck As in Wreck Ty Cobb The Glory of Their Times Ball Four The Boys of Summer Stengel: His Life and Times

ScarletKnight41 Feb 23 2006 11:17 AM

Tug's autobiography, penned right before his death, is a must-read for any Mets fan. The down and dirty story of the 1986 Mets is a good read, by someone who took the effort to court the Crane Pool readership pool.

Frayed Knot Feb 23 2006 04:28 PM

I think 'Moneyball' is one of the more important and interesting baseball books from recent years ... and NO, it's not a stats book despite numerous claims from those who haven't read it. It's as much a business book as a sports one really. Also along those same lines (if you don't mind going back a few years -- like around 10) 'Lords of the Realm' is still a good one. A lot of the explanations as to how and why MLB got itself into a financial & competative mess are still relevent. I liked Buster Olney's Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty - so long as having the letters Y-A-N-K-E-E in the title isn't a disqualifier. It's really neither pro nor anti Yankee as such but tells a good story and, even if I don't fully buy the author's thesis that there was something unique about those Yanquis which drove them to win regularly, it's been somewhat prophetic for 5 straight years to this point (and counting!!!!) Biographies: Leigh Montville's one of Ted Williams or Cramer's 'DiMaggio' (see Dickshot's thread) are both well done and certainly more recent than the Cobb/Veeck ones in your current lineup.

Yancy Street Gang Feb 23 2006 04:39 PM

Thanks, Frayed and Scarlett! I don't think I'll go with Bad Guys, because I read it and didn't particularly like it. Tug's book is a real possibility, though. I agree about Moneyball. It's more about the state of the game than it is about stats, and it's an important read. I'll almost definitely include that one. I hadn't thought of Cramer's DiMaggio book, but I really should have. (That's why I started this thread, I guess.) That's a possibility, too. I'm not familiar with Olney's book, but I have heard of Montville's though I haven't read it. I'll consider both of those as well. Thank you! Any other suggestions? Any arguments for keeping any of the existing six?

Frayed Knot Feb 23 2006 05:01 PM

Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty focuses on Game 7 vs the D'Backs '01 WS and attempts to make the case that it was that loss which sent George back into his 1980-ish BUY! BUY! BUY! mode and in doing that the Yanx lost some of what had made the '96-'00 teams special. I don't think it's that simple (neither I'm sure does Olney who covered them for the NYTimes in those years) but it's good none-the-less and that it came out in 2002 and there have been no parades in lower Manhattan in the 4 Octobers since kind of backs his point at least a little. ]Any arguments for keeping any of the existing six? I can always make a case for keeping Ball Four around. That the concept of ballplayers struggling for money and the fact that the book was considered controversial at the time are both strange and dated ideastoday might make an argument that it's no longer as relevent in these times ... or maybe that it's even moreso.

Johnny Dickshot Feb 23 2006 05:10 PM

I also read Montville's Williams book and would recommend it but not in a Metly way. Any promo of Moneyball should include its old-school counterpart, Dollar Sign on the Muscle, which is 20+ years old but still good and still in print but prolly not the kinda title that's gonna ring up those co-promotional US Dollars for your website. Overlooked, it seemed, and possessing a cool cover that would look good on your page, The Meaning of Ichiro, by Robert Whiting: And if you wanted to continue the theme, I'm currently enjoying Remembering Japanese Baseball, which is sort of a "Glory of their Times" oral history of J-ball, and a story not often told in English much less Japanese.

DocTee Feb 23 2006 09:55 PM

The Golden Game: A History of California Baseball -- nice look at BB before the Giants and Dodgers blazed West-- and since!

Yancy Street Gang Feb 24 2006 03:45 PM

Interesting, Johnny. I recently picked up a Japanese baseball book, You Gotta Have Wa. (I've been gathering Japan books, in anticipation of a possible vacation there later this year. First I have four Alaska books to read prior to my summer trip.) Anyway... I had also considered The Chrysanthemum and the Bat before settling on Wa, but after reading a couple of reviews it seemed rather out of date. The Ichiro book might be a good one for the website, though. Thanks!

Johnny Dickshot Feb 24 2006 03:54 PM

The Ichiro book contains a lot of the same stuff as 'Wa,' just backwards: Whereas 'Wa' focuses on the Americans finding Japan a weird place to play baseball, 'Ichiro' finds Japanese players astonished at how strangely they play ball out west. I love these stories of how, for instance, the Japanese players wouldn't slide to break up the double-play until well into the 1950s, when they were taught by an American, Wally Yonamine. And how Ichiro found it incomprehensible that players in MLB throw their gloves on the bench or spit on the dugout floor. Whiting writes a forward to the oral history too. Nothing I wanna do more than go see a game in japan someday.

Yancy Street Gang Feb 24 2006 03:57 PM

Me too. My potential trip will likely be in November, though, which is off-season for both baseball and sumo.

Johnny Dickshot Feb 24 2006 04:30 PM

The CPF Book club, Film forum and baseball forum collide in a single message: Bout 2 years ago I wrote about going to a fundraiser for a documentary film about the annual Japan high school tournament. There's a trailer for it at this site: [url]http://www.projectilearts.org/kokoyakyu/koko_trailer.html[/url]

metirish Feb 26 2006 04:07 PM

I really enjoyed this one...