The most recommended baseball books

I always enjoy a “fish out of water” story, and this one hit home for me–a newspaperman who had never played fantasy baseball joining the most prestigious league of national experts.

I was amused at how he thought all his professional connections would give him a leg up, but the narrative was played for laughs, making it a very enjoyable read.  

I've never read anything with this style of writing. Ever. It was refreshing and poignant while also having the ability to sucker-punch me right in the chest with angsty goodness. I knew I would be walking into a sports romance, I had heard she could write the schmexiness, but what I didn't know was that Moonshot would be so un-put-downable that I would be a worthless human being until I devoured every last page - and devour I did.

Are we doomed to meet the same fate as our ancestors? That’s the threat looming over failed baseball player and self-destructive alcoholic Stephan Detals, whose father and grandfather died by suicide on their 39th birthdays.

With Stephan’s 39th birthday coming in a few days, he returns to his hometown to learn the truth about his father and grandfather’s deaths in hope of avoiding their fatal destinies. Sojka creates a twisty mystery with fascinating characters and Texas gothic. He also keeps up the tension as the fateful date approaches.

I felt Sojka did a wonderful job evoking the Texas landscape and the experience of a professional baseball player, which made me feel more engaged to the story and characters. This book kept me turning pages to its climax.

While I am a Cleveland Indians fan, my favorite national league team to root for as a child was the New York Mets - especially the flamboyant and talented 1986 team that partied their way to a World Series trophy. 

In The Bad Guys Won, famed columnist and bestselling author Jeff Pearlman manages to weave all of the craziness of that ‘86 team into a wonderful memoir of a team that had the talent to have been a dynasty in Major League Baseball for years to come. Unfortunately for the Mets, and due to many of the behaviors of the colorful characters chronicled in the book, that dynasty never came to fruition.

I love this story so much I’ve read it at least four times. What an endearing narrator! Everybody needs a friend like Jeremiah with his sense of humor, bravery, and love of life. Bauer always makes us laugh out loud on many pages, then she’ll break your heart for just a sentence or two. While reading and re-reading this middle-grade novel, I learned a lot about how to tell a heartwarming story that makes readers quickly turn pages to see what happens next. But with Bauer’s books, not too quick. You don’t want to miss a word!

Bancroft “Ban” Johnson, the founder and first president of the American League, set his sights early on challenging the domination of the National Leauge, which came to power in the 1870s. Wilbert’s book adequately depicts Johnson’s rise to power and his subsequent challenge to National League teams, culminating in the AL’s first official season as a major league in 1901, two years before the strong-willed Johnson was able to muscle a team into Manhattan to challenge the NL’s dominant franchise, the New York Giants.

Coover’s prescient novel pre-dates the explosion of sports fantasy leagues by at least a decade, but places an imaginary league at the center of his story. Anyone who has ever played in fantasy leagues knows their power. The fantasy can take over your life, which is precisely what happens to J. Henry Waugh. The protagonist is a mild-mannered accountant by day, but the owner-operated-madman-in-charge of his self-created league at night. Eventually, it overwhelms his real life. This is a novel about the dangers of living inside your own head.

How’s this for a challenge? Write a humorous book during World War One that can still make readers laugh 100 years later. That’s exactly what Lardner does here, when he turns his famous character Jack Keefe, the semi-literate, big-talking baseball pitcher into a soldier and sends him boasting and bragging to “Nobody’s Land,” where he hilariously ducks every dangerous situation he’s put in.

In terms of pulse-pounding mysteries, they don’t get much better than this. Following a high school student in a rural town, Die Softly is a dark and twisted story that keeps you guessing until the very end. Even though I read this book for the first time many, many years ago, I still enjoy picking it up and bringing it on vacation with me. It is a quick read, perfect for a long-ish flight, and never gets old.

Off the playing field, baseball has both influenced and helped shape American society.

I loved this book because it told the neglected story of how a sports team can profoundly affect its surrounding community. Here is the insider tale of the move by the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in the 1950s, the politics that helped shape that move, and the consequences for these two cities.

In Brooklyn, a fanatical fan base was betrayed and in Los Angeles a Mexican-American community was rudely displaced for the new ballpark. It’s a compelling story of winners and losers.