Ok, enough already about Bush, Gtmo, and Iraq

[NeilT]

This should be for a Friday, but it's time to go to the library or a book store and prepare for the spring traing.  Name five favorite baseball books, with one each from the following categories:

History
Biography (including autobiography or memoires)
Theory or how-to books
Fiction
Essays

Here are mine:

History:  The Head Game: Baseball Seen from the Pitcher's Mound by Roger Kahn.  You could argue this as theory, I guess, but I liked the stories about pitchers.

Biography:  Maybe I'll Pitch Forever: A Great Baseball Player Tells the Hilarious Story Behind the Legend By Satchel Paige.  I thought allot about the Ted Williams biography from a couple of years ago, and about a random Honus Wagner biography I read once.  I'll stick with Satchel, though.  Ball Four would be an obvious choice.

Theory:  The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.  What a great book.  I love the section about left-handed catchers: it absolutely encapsulates why James is such a fun baseball writer.

Fiction.  This is hard: I just haven't read much good baseball fiction.  I thought about the Terry Soos mysteries, and about The Great American Novel.  The Natural depresses me, and for the life of me I can't remember anything about Shoeless Joe except the movie.  I'll go with You Know Me, Al, because of the immortal dubbing of the World Serious.

Essays:  The Summer Game by Roger Angel.  No question, hands down, the single best baseball book ever written.  Angel is writing at the same time and the same genre as Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson, but Angel is a likeable human being writing about something he cares about.  Any Astros fan who hasn't read his trip to the Astrodome circa 1965 is missing a great, great essay.

awright.  give me something to read.

[VirtualBob]

Quote:
This should be for a Friday, but it's time to go to the library or a book store and prepare for the spring traing.  Name five favorite baseball books, with one each from the following categories:

History
Biography (including autobiography or memoires)
Theory or how-to books
Fiction
Essays

Here are mine:

History:  The Head Game: Baseball Seen from the Pitcher's Mound by Roger Kahn.  You could argue this as theory, I guess, but I liked the stories about pitchers.

Biography:  Maybe I'll Pitch Forever: A Great Baseball Player Tells the Hilarious Story Behind the Legend By Satchel Paige.  I thought allot about the Ted Williams biography from a couple of years ago, and about a random Honus Wagner biography I read once.  I'll stick with Satchel, though.  Ball Four would be an obvious choice.

Theory:  The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.  What a great book.  I love the section about left-handed catchers: it absolutely encapsulates why James is such a fun baseball writer.

Fiction.  This is hard: I just haven't read much good baseball fiction.  I thought about the Terry Soos mysteries, and about The Great American Novel.  The Natural depresses me, and for the life of me I can't remember anything about Shoeless Joe except the movie.  I'll go with You Know Me, Al, because of the immortal dubbing of the World Serious.

Essays:  The Summer Game by Roger Angel.  No question, hands down, the single best baseball book ever written.  Angel is writing at the same time and the same genre as Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson, but Angel is a likeable human being writing about something he cares about.  Any Astros fan who hasn't read his trip to the Astrodome circa 1965 is missing a great, great essay.

awright.  give me something to read.

For fiction, you gotta read The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.  It helps if you're old ... the book is set in the 50's and depends to some extent on both the invincibility of the Yankees (causing everyone east of the East River or west of the Delaware to hate them) and also the impossible ineptitude of the Washington Senators.  Nevertheless, a great read.

I'll second your nomination of The Summer Game for the best all-time, though.  And everything else he wrote is close behind.

[Señor Stan]

Fiction: Checks and Imbalances: Competitive Disparity in Major League Baseball

[Bench]

History:   Summer of '49  by David Halberstam (I've always loved Halberstam's writing, and this is his best baseball book). Also good is Halberstam's  The Teammates , which is a memoir of Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky driving down to Florida to visit a dying Ted Williams, and recollecting the old days.

Fiction:   For Love of the Game  by Michael Shaara. Yes it was made into a weepy chick flick starring Costner, but the book sticks to baseball, is constructed originally, and an excellent short read. Perfect for a long plane ride.

Meta-Fiction:  The first 50 pages of  Underworld  by Don Dellillo. Just a perfect piece of prose describing The Shot Heard Around the World from diverse perspectives. The next 800 pages of the book are good if you're into post-modern meta-fiction about how we lost our innocence once the Cold War ended, but the first fifty pages are worth a read if you have a half-hour to kill at a Barnes & Noble.

Essays:  Why Time Begins on Opening Day by Thomas Boswell. I'm not a huge fan of his writing, but there are definately some enjoyable pieces.

[Holly]

My baseball literature is kind of restricted to some SABR material, and a little fiction, plus the usual suspects, so I'm not sure what this is worth BUT... hopefully the Fiction one is new to ya

Quote:

History - The Greatest Game Ever Played, by Jerry Izenberg. Argh.

Biography (including autobiography or memoires) - Ball Four is the only one I have which I've finished, but I also have Dierker's (great cover art), and You're Out And You're Ugly Too (Durwood Merrill). I helped Bo Durkac a little bit with editing his 2001: A Baseball Odyssey

Theory or how-to books - haven't read any

Fiction - Iowa Baseball Confederacy, by W. P. Kinsella. This is a weirder tale by the same author who penned Shoeless Joe. In fact, it's sort of an inside-out version of that, where the main characters delve into an alternative baseball universe. Good read, though. I like Kinsella's style.

Essays - Anything you can find from the SABR folks is worth reading. Garrison Keillor also has a terrific little fictional essay about Babe Ruth visiting Lake Wobegon.

[Frobie]

Oooooh, this looks like a good 'un!

History:  The Pitch That Killed by Mike Sowell.  A history of the 1920 season, including the death of Ray Chapman and the tight AL pennant race that was complicated by the breaking of the Black Sox scandal and subsequent suspensions.

Biography (including autobiography or memoires):  Probably Jackie Robinson: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad.  Far from hero worship, it also discusses Robinson's flaws and how he overcame them to become the ballplayer/man that he was.

Theory or how-to books:  NHBA by Bill James.  Best bathroom book of all time.

Fiction:  The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover.  As an unreformed Strat-O-Matic geek, it's a great read.   The Natural by Bernard Malamud is a close second.  Any similarities to the Robert Redford movie (which I also like) were purely coincidental.  
 
Essays:  I don't have many books in this category, but Game Time by Roger Angell is probably my favorite.  I am embarrassed to say that I've been collecting baseball books for some time, but this was the first (and so far only) Angell book I've read.  I was truly impressed.

And if I can mention another category, Best Baseball Book That's Just Plain Fun:  Ball Four by Jim Bouton.  I used to read it every year around spring training time.  I can still pick it up and find something really damn funny on any random page.  I guess some of us never really grow up...  

[Taras Bulba]

Good reads.  I would add Jim R.'s piece on Bibb Falk that was published in Elysian Fields--very entertaining.  His instructional stuff is also top notch.  I should note that I have to say this as I am moving to a house a few blocks away from his and don't want him throwing beer cans and/or urinating on my lawn.

[JimR]

high praise indeed.

[David in Jackson]

A few quick thoughts (I'm sure I'm leaving out some classics and I'm not exactly strict about categories):

History: Numbers Game (Jonathan Schwartz is the author, I think).  A new book about the history of baseball statistics, how they developed and have been used.  Not just for saber-geeks (though it helps).

Biography (including autobiography or memoires): Stolen Season by David Lamb, a book about travelling around the country going to minor league ballparks.

Theory or how-to books: Moneyball.  Even if you hate saber-geeks, you need to read it.

Fiction: I'm drawing a blank on this one besides the obvious.

Essays: Anything by Roger Angell.

[Frobie]

Quote:
History: Numbers Game (Jonathan Schwartz is the author, I think).  A new book about the history of baseball statistics, how they developed and have been used.  Not just for saber-geeks (though it helps).

Just happened to read that one last week.  It was really good.  You're right, it's much more of a history book that a standard SABR-geek book.

[geezerdonk]

 The Boys of Summer is my favorite baseball book.
 A Season on the Edge is my favorite sports book.
Completely off topic, I highly recommend the  Portugese Irregular Verbs series by Alexander McLean Smith.

[toddthebod]

I'm a big fan of Michael Chabon's book Summerland.  While it is not a baseball book, per se, baseball is a very important part of the novel.

[shortstop]

"The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." is a great book. So are "Summer of '49" and the book Halbertsam wrote about the '68 WS (Cards v. Yanks).

One with some local interest, although not really that well written is the one about the Astros/Mets playoff series. It's called "The Greatest game Ever" or something like that.

"Nine Innings" by Daniel Okent is also excellent.

[Russ99]

My current fave is the The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers : An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches.

This book is chock full of insight on current and past pitchers and pitching styles, essays on all the different types of pitches (I wonder if info on the gyroball will make the second edition?) and lots of interesting info on how two red laces make the game so great.

[David in Jackson]

Quote:
My current fave is the The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers : An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches.

This book is chock full of insight on current and past pitchers and pitching styles, essays on all the different types of pitches (I wonder if info on the gyroball will make the second edition?) and lots of interesting info on how two red laces make the game so great.

That's funny.  I'm a big James/Neyer fan (though many on this board aren't, I know) and thought the book was TERRIBLE.  There was almost nothing it of interest.  About 80% of the book would be nothing more than a pitcher's name and what types of pitches he threw.  I can't imagine ever looking at those enties.  There were a few brief essays, but even those were specifically designed to cover people you've never heard of, not to put a new slant on important players or new ideas.

[NeilT]

I'm digging up really old threads, but I wanted to follow up on the 2 books I read (way back in January) from the suggestions made.  Virtual Bob suggested The Year the Yankees Won the Pennant.  David in Jackson suggested The Numbers Game by Alan Schwarz.  Yankees was good enough, and should be read just because it's such a 50s book.  I'm still looking, though, for great baseball fiction (I'm inclined to agree that Summerland is about as good as it gets, but I haven't read the Delillo or The Universal Baseball Association--next year's January training).  I thought the numbers game was outstanding, better than MoneyBall. It was as much of a history of a certain approach to fandom as it was of baseball, but it was very readable, not particularly didactic, and especially in the late chapter about baseball and luck just plain fascinating.  

Thanks.  This was a great list.

[mihoba]

Quote:
and the book Halbertsam wrote about the '68 WS (Cards v. Yanks).

This must be fiction, 'cause the Tigers won the '68 Series, thanks to Mickey Lolich.

[Arky Vaughan]

Quote:
Fiction.  This is hard: I just haven't read much good baseball fiction.  I thought about the Terry Soos mysteries, and about The Great American Novel.  The Natural depresses me, and for the life of me I can't remember anything about Shoeless Joe except the movie.  I'll go with You Know Me, Al, because of the immortal dubbing of the World Serious.

See if you can get a copy of The Celebrant.

[Arky Vaughan]

Quote:
Fiction.  This is hard: I just haven't read much good baseball fiction.  I thought about the Terry Soos mysteries, and about The Great American Novel.  The Natural depresses me, and for the life of me I can't remember anything about Shoeless Joe except the movie.  I'll go with You Know Me, Al, because of the immortal dubbing of the World Serious.

Also, for history, try John Heylar's Lords of the Realm.  The stuff about Judge Hofheinz is classic.