I split my writing time between fiction and non-fiction, the latter usually baseball-themed, and I’ve published two books of baseball writing. My reading is similarly bifurcated; there’s always a baseball book on my nightstand. I’ve also got a background in history, and I genuinely enjoy deep research (it’s a great way to put off, you know, writing). Baseball is such fertile ground, so ripe for deep dives—the nexus of sport, culture, entertainment, economics, labour relations, etc. The best baseball books are more than boxscores and transactions, they place the game in its historical context. Books that manage to synthesize all of the above are some of my favourite reads.
I wrote...
The Only Way Is the Steady Way: Essays on Baseball, Ichiro, and How We Watch the Game
By
Andrew Forbes
What is my book about?
The Only Way Is the Steady Way is a baseball memoir in scorecards and baseball cards, a recollection of the game’s biggest stars and most outlandish personalities, and introspective letters to a legendary player. These essays examine the meaning of baseball across international borders and at all levels of the game—from Little League diamonds to big league ballparks. Parents learn unexpected lessons at t-ball, cheap souvenirs reveal their hidden significance, and baseball’s beating heart is exposed through sharply beautiful observations about the history of the game. Forbes locates peace, reassurance, and a way to measure the passage of time with home run bonanzas, old games on YouTube, and especially in the unique career of beloved outfielder Ichiro Suzuki.
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The Books I Picked & Why
How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed
By
Thomas W. Gilbert
Why this book?
Gilbert is both a shrewd historian and a wonderful writer, and in this deeply researched volume, he details how and, convincingly, why the rise of the emerging urban bourgeoisie, extant political currents, and the expansion of railroads took the game of baseball from a game played in New York City and Brooklyn to the most popular sport among both players and spectators from one side of the continent to the other (and beyond).
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Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game
By
John Thorn
Why this book?
John Thorn—the official historian of Major League Baseball—is a living encyclopedia, and this is his definitive tome on the game’s nineteenth-century beginnings, from the amateur era to the rise of the first professional leagues. This and Gilbert’s book might be viewed as companion pieces—indeed, Thorn wrote the introduction to How Baseball Happened—and both dispel the ridiculous myth that the game was invented in Cooperstown, New York by a young man who would grow up to be a Civil War hero, but Thorn goes deep on the fascinating story of who created that myth, and why, which is a tale so odd it’s nearly novelistic.
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Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History
By
Cait N. Murphy
Why this book?
We move into the twentieth century with Murphy’s book, a chronicle of a strange and thrilling season smack in the heart of the Deadball Era, when the two leagues we know today—the National and American—had solidified, their champions meeting each autumn in the still-new World Series. Crazy ’08 focuses on the pennant races that year, especially the National League race, between the Chicago Cubs, New York Giants, and Pittsburgh Pirates, which reached its fevered crescendo with a game that featured what’s known as “Merkle’s Boner.” But the book’s broader concern is the atmosphere of political corruption, racial strife, crime, and social upheaval which surrounded baseball. Murphy’s research is deep, but the book reads like journalism because she’s got a storyteller’s heart.
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Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy
By
Jane Leavy
Why this book?
Jane Leavy has written three of the best baseball biographies ever published, but if I had to recommend just one, this is it (but you should definitely also seek out her books on Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle). Her ostensible subject here is the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time—“the left arm of God”—his story told in parallel with the unfolding of his perfect game against the Cubs on September 9, 1965, but she’s also writing with great insight about the 1960s, race, celebrity, labor rights, and American Judaism. The book is a marvel, all the more impressive when viewed in light of Koufax’ notorious aversion to public revelation. But Leavy is a titan, and only she could have written it.
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The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron
By
Howard Bryant
Why this book?
Henry Aaron’s career spanned the Negro Leagues, the Civil Rights movement, baseball’s expansion era, the turbulent ’60s, and the freaky ’70s, all while dealing with intractable racism, especially as he neared Babe Ruth’s home run record. Aaron’s autobiography, I Had a Hammer, is certainly worth reading, but author and NPR correspondent Howard Bryant is the right man to put Aaron’s life and career in historical perspective. The Last Hero is an intelligent and incisive social history of the second half of the twentieth century, as well as a stirring account of a heroic baseball life. Incidentally, Bryant’s next book is a biography of Rickey Henderson, which promises more of this goodness. I can’t wait.
