In need of cheering up, taking advantage of the respite from frenzied Pigskin Preoccupation, and looking  for something to sustain me through the final few weeks before pitchers and catchers report, I indulge myself with a belated Friday list that pays homage to my 10 favorite baseball books. 

You will not find on this list Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel, which, first, was not as advertised by the title, and, second, had no remote connection to baseball. You will not find on this list Robert Coover’s bizarre The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., perhaps because I spent too much time as a kid playing Strat-o-Matic Baseball, and the idea of living through fantasy is too painful to confront. (On the other hand, I do come to OS every day . . . .)  

And you will most definitely not find The Natural. I’m sorry, but that is a fable not a baseball book. (And a damn depressing one, at that.) It has no verisimilitude. Nada. Zilch. Malamud’s characters do not look, move, or sound like ballplayers.  

10.       The Baseball Encyclopedia. In the days of yesteryear, before baseballreference.com could give you every stat ever, and before we thought about home-road, lefty-righty, and day-night splits, there was a limited set of numbers that told the tale of a ballplayer’s life, and there was only one place to get them handily—from The Baseball Encyclopedia. I loved to browse through, looking for the nuggets hidden inside, like the mass of boldface type highlighting Babe Ruth’s league-leading performances every year; the amazing show pinchhitter extraordinaire Dusty Rhodes put on in the 1954 World Series; the beauty and sadness hidden within Roberto Clemente’s last and 3,000th hit; and the harsh realization that my recollection of Purnal Goldy’s triumphal 1962, filling in for Al Kaline after the Tigers rightfielder broke his collarbone, was a mirage because the punk only hit .229. 

9.         The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book. A very frivolous, very enjoyable book published in the ‘70s that allows me to look back fondly at oodles of baseball cards I remembered having or lusting after when a wee lad and to recall flipping cards with my brother against our bedroom wall and attaching the unwanted ones (the sixth Gino Cimoli) with clothespins to the spokes of our bikes’ wheels. (“Holy, Moly!” we would say. “Another Cimoli!”) 

8.         The book of forgotten title that I read in 1965 or so about the first pathetic three years of the New York Mets, the first baseball book I read and which made me absolutely love Casey Stengel. A silly book that appealed to me far more than The Kid from Tomkinsville ever could.

7.         The Celebrant. Just ran into this novel by Eric Rolfe Greenberg a couple of years ago and was dazzled (and saddened) by its tale of the relationship between a jewelry designer or great art and his hero, Christy Mathewson, which includes some wonderful descriptions of ballgames, a great feel for the period, fascinating glimpses of immigrant assimilation, and a somber account of the impact of the Black Sox scandal and the last years of Big Six.  

6.         Ball Four. Jim Bouton’s tell-all was one hilarious eye-opener, no doubt about it. I didn’t mind the knocking of heroes from their pedestals since most of the fallen were Yankees. And I never quite looked at ballplayers the same afterward, which probably ain’t a bad thing. (Until the current crop of Phils, all fine upstanding citizens, as well as gentlemen, of course.) 

5.         A Day in the Bleachers. Another relatively recent read, this Arnold Hano book is about the first game of the 1954 World Series, when Willie Mays made The Catch, just below where Hano was sitting, as the author had decided that very morning to go to the game and scored centerfield bleacher seats. The book is a marvelous account of fans interacting and bonding and ably reveals the deep background underlying any single ballgame. 

4.         Baseball’s Great Experiment. Jules Tygiel’s account of the signing and career of Jackie Robinson recounts the heroism of Robinson and of Branch Rickey (and Pee Wee Reese) and the powerful impact that this event had on American society. An important story, very well told. Good game action, too. 

3.         The Summer Game. This compilation of Roger Angell baseball columns from The New Yorker, covering the 1962 to 1971 seasons (and including the punningly allusive title “The Flowering and Subsequent Deflowering of New England,” to cover the 1967 Impossible Dream year, surpassed only, some books later, by the delightfully palindromic “Not So, Boston” about the 1986 season) was my introduction to the art of Roger Angell, who became a regular read as a result. Thank God for remaindered books. Best dollar I ever spent.  

2.         Bang the Drum Slowly. Mark Harris’s funny, tearful story of the final season of middling catcher Bruce Pearson, as told by the hilarious and wise Henry Wiggen, is both true to baseball and true to life. This book is not number one only because I prefer the sunnier . . . 

1.         The Southpaw. The first Henry Wiggen book that Harris penned, chronicling Author Wiggen’s youth, years in minor league ball, and rookie season. Full of interesting characters; vivid game descriptions; a realistic sounding (thus alternately appealing and appalling) locker room; the delightful Holly, the prize Henry earns by growing up in this lively bildungsroman; an instructive lesson on writing, when Henry recounts how his father, friend, and future wife had him boil his account of two years in the minors, which had run 60 pages of manuscript, down to a few, the book is most notable for its hilarious narrative voice (Henry is Huck Finn playing ball) and its deep humanity. 

Honorable mentions: Shoeless Joe (source of Field of Dreams); The Great Baseball Mystery (excellent book about the Black Sox scandal); The Glory of Their Times (Lawrence Ritter’s wonderful oral history of baseball’s early years); Only the Ball Was White (Robert Peterson’s wonderful oral history of the Negro Leagues); The Boys of Summer (Roger Kahn's paean to the Brooklyn Dodgers, which even this Giant partisan could appreciate); and After the Sixth Game (Peter Gammons—‘nuf said).

(Oh, and all of Roger Angell’s other books and the other two Henry Wiggen books.) 

Words © 2010 AtHome Pilgrim.

All Rights Reserved.