The 34-Ton Bat

The Story of Baseball as Told Through Bobbleheads, Cracker Jacks, Jockstraps, Eye Black, and 375 Other Strange and Unforgettable Objects

Steve Rushin - 2013 Little, Brown & Company

Steve Rushin makes reading fun again. 

And it's not just because he has a unique writing style that heavily leans on puns and word play.  It's because he had the great idea to tell the story of baseball not through the lens of another winning season, GOAT player or season that changed the lives of every small town citizen, but through the everyday parts of the game that we take for granted.  Bats. Baseballs. Uniforms. Bobble Heads. Cracker Jacks. Souvenirs.

The book's just the right length, easy to read and packed with interesting information.  I'd call this a must read for anyone who loves the national pastime. 

October 1964

David Halberstam - 1995 Random House Publishing Group

Although this book has been around for a while, it was nice to read it in context of more recent books that have been published about some of the players from that time; namely Mantle and Maris among others.

Halberstam has a great gift for making a nonfiction work about a statistically-crazed sport read like a novel.  Considering some of the elements involved in that summer of 1964, this is a novel with profound racial themes and a clear dichotomy between an old way of thinking, represented by the Yankees, and a new way of life, represented by the Cardinals.  Halberstam doesn't either stop at the players, also describing how these changes affected all aspects of baseball from the front office to scouts to the press corp.

October 1964 is an easy, enjoyable book and one recommend for someone just looking for a nice baseball read.

Joe DiMaggio

The Hero's Life
Richard Ben Cramer - 2001 Simon & Schuster

This book was given to me by a friend over a year ago and I finally got around to reading it.  I'm sorry it took me so long.  "Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life" is very enjoyable, well written, and pretty thoroughly researched.  Think of it as the When Pride Still Mattered or The Last Boy for Joe DiMaggio.

However, this book comes with a caveat.  After reading When Pride Still Mattered, I not only still liked Vince Lombardi but also became a little bit of a Green Bay fan.  After reading this book, I didn't like Joe DiMaggio as much. 

Because Cramer does an excellent job of building a full picture of the man we raised to hero status, realize that also sets us up for disappointment when we see how fame and greed, two recurring themes in the book, made DiMaggio behave.   There's a reason we allow myth to shroud our heroes for so long, and often it's because we just like them better that way. 

If you don't want to know the truth, don't read this book.  For everyone else, it's a highly recommended read.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Ben Fountain - 2012 HarperCollins Publishers

This book is probably considered a political or military story, but it talks about football, so it counts as a sports book for me.

Whatever it's considered, Billy Lynn is worth reading because of its unique writing style and descriptive phrases.  Besides, it's good for us sports freaks to prove we can read something besides for box scores every once in a while.

Still, serious sport nuts will not enjoy this for its football, because it's only used as a backdrop in tandem with the Dallas Cowboys to narrow in on America's opulence and obsession with entertainment.  So the book talks about sports, just not positively.   We could get mad at Ben Fountain for that but this book is too good for such trivialities.

Billy Lynn is a worthy literary experience and enjoyable to boot.

Glory in the Fall

The Greatest Moments in World Series History
Edited by Peter Golenbock - 2012 Sterling

Glory in the Fall is a compilation of World Series writing, spanning the years of the Fall Classic almost since it's inception.  Some years are missing and a few have more than one insertion, but the compilation and diversity of writers and voices are enjoyable.

Admittedly, some pieces are better than others and there were two or three that were outright boring.  Overall, however, the writing flowed and tended to focus on either the most important issue or play surrounding the series.  It's a good read for the more nostalgic and good enough for the less so.

The Hammer

The Best of Hank Aaron from the Pages of Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated - 2007 Sports Illustrated Books

This book is a compilation of a few key Sports Illustrated articles spanning Hank Aaron's career, from when he was a rookie through his days as a retired player.

The selected articles give a nice overview of Aaron's career and point to the specific issues he faced and dealt with as a player.  As such, the book is a good primer for first time learners or a nice review for more knowledgeable fans.

Reggie Jackson

The Life and Thunderous Career of Baseball's Mr October

Dayn Perry - 2011 HarperCollins Publishers

Reggie Jackson seems to be one of those players that most people have an opinion about, and yet, somehow, Dayn Perry wrote a book about him without overtly taking sides. 

At first, it feels surprising that a book about such a colorful character would be so simple and factual, but in the end I appreciate that Perry provides the information and let's us decide which way to go with it.  I also like how each chapter is focused on a (in)famous Reggie quote.

In all, a nice, easy, informative read.

The Machine

A Hot Team, A Legendary Season, and a Heart-Stopping World Series:
The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds
Joe Posnanski - 2010 HarperCollins Publishers

Most Entertaining Baseball Books I've read thus far:
1. Ball Four
2. The Bullpen Gospels
3. The Machine

It's hard to encapsulate the enjoyment of this book in a few short words but suffice it say that it's one of those you'll stay up into the early hours of the morning racing to finish.  I did.

The Catcher was a Spy

The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
Nicholas Dawidoff - 1995 Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

There isn't much to write about this well researched book because it's not really a sports book. 

Brief mention is made of Berg's athletic career but most of the book focuses on his eccentric personality and life style.   By the end of the book I was more frustrated with Berg's wasted potential than fascinated by his "secret" life.

Imperfect

An Improbable Life
Jim Abbot and Tim Brown - 2013 Random House Publishing

What impressed me most about Imperfect is how well it is written for an athlete's autobiography.  This may seem irrelevant but, considering there are numerous autobiographies of athletes in which the author stayed a little too true to his subject, this was a nice change because it's a good story and it's well written.

The book is supposed to be set up around Jim Abbott's no-hitter with the Yankees but the way the chapters are written the structure doesn't work as well as it should.   There are little blurbs about the no-hitter followed by longer chapters that tell Abbott's story.  Because of this, the few pages dedicated to the no-hitter in between read more like an interruption to the storytelling.   Also, most of these sections don't really describe the game but instead present a few lines about Abbott's thoughts during the game and some of the closer calls that happened.

Despite this, the story is still a good one and I would say it's worth giving this book a shot.

Living on the Black

Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember
Jonathan Feinstein - 2008 Hachette Book Group

True to Feinstein's writing, Living on the Black meets the two basic tenants of good books; (1) it's easy to read and (2) it's informative.

The book follows the seasons of Tom Glavine, in the year he was chasing his 300th win with the Mets, and Mike Mussina, when he hit lucky number 250 with the Yankees.  Aside from the interesting parallels writing about pitchers on these two teams creates, the very subject matter of these great pitchers is plenty interesting by itself.

I like that the book really focuses on the pitchers and, while it does follow the teams and mention bits about other teammates and the managers, the focus does not waver far for long.

The information about a season of pitching and the insight about what it means to be a pitcher based on the personal accounts of these two pitchers makes this a book worth the read.