I liked "Dollar Sign on the Muscle", all about scouts.

There are also a couple of books by minor leaguers. I recall Steve Fireovid had one, and Brent Mandel another. I also have to check my bookshelves when I get home.

Dave, please don't forget The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn. An outstanding book about the '52 Dodgers, both in their glory and twenty years removed from it.

The first half of the book focuses on how a Jewish boy (Kahn) and his father secretly nurture a love for baseball bordering on obsession, even as his mother stresses classic music and literature. Eventually, Kahn got a job as a Dodgers beat reporter in 1952, with integration in baseball still very much a novelty and with the Dodgers just months removed from the Shot Heard 'Round The World.

In the book's second half, Kahn recounts his visits to about 15 players in the late '60s and early '70s, and their struggles with life after baseball. Campanella's in a wheelchair; Furillo's a construction worker, building the World Trade Center; Erskine finds a great deal of joy in watching his severely retarded son grow up. Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson come to life as complex and impressive individuals.

The most recent edition includes a eulogy to Reese. It's a great, and quick, read -- I couldn't recommend it any more highly.

I just recently picked up The Hidden Game of Baseball by John Thorn and Pete Palmer. It's definitely a fine statistics book even though it is quite outdated. Thorn and Palmer go to great lengths to explain park factors and various other "saber" tools. I would recommend the book to anyone who is routinely confused by most of the terms and processes used on this site. At the very least it’s a great introduction into sabermetrics.

Here's a few:

The Celebrant/Eric Rolfe Greenberg -- Novel about the baseball-crazed younger son of a commemorative jewellery (world series ring)family in the New York of John McGraw, and his relationship with Christy Mathewson.

Nine Sides of the Diamond: Baseball's Great Glove Men on the Fine Art of Defense/David Falkner -- Marvel as Ozzie explains how he starts back up to throw during the dive for the ball.

Champagne and Baloney: The Rise and Fall of Finlay's A's/Tom Clark -- Beyond description.

New York City Baseball: The Last Golden Age 1947-1957/Harvey Frommer

Weaver on Strategy/Earl Weaver & a helper.

Does anybody remember the title of a time travel/baseball novel featuring the roistering '69 Cincinnati Redlegs?

I still love poking through my old Elias books, and I much preferred them to the Abstracts (though I own a couple of those). I'm not sure what it was, but James' writing style played a part I think.

The Year I Owned the Yankees is probably the baseball book I've re-read the most times. My goodness was that funny. By the way, for those collectors out there, I have a signed copy of "At home on second" by Roberto Alomar. All those years working at Coles amounted to something I suppose.

Great call on Dollar Sign on the Muscle, Gerry. Fantastic book.

I'm currently reading Sparky Lyle's The Year I Owned The Yankees, which Coach lent me, and it's terrific.

My own choices, leaving out the Bill James Abstracts and Moneyball as requested, and all off the top of my head... there are bound to be tons of omissions:

I Was Right On Time, Buck O'Neil
The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence Ritter
Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way of Baseball, Sadaharu Oh

These three books have brought me as much pleasure as any books I have ever read. They are MUST reads.

Excellent books:

The Tropic of Baseball, Rob Ruck
The Chrysanthemum and the Bat and You Gotta Have Wa, Robert Whiting
Total Baseball, the articles are terrific and VERY underrated
The Politics of Glory and the Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James, these are flawed but terrific and I want to mention them anyway.
Summer of '49, David Halberstam
Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball, Leonard Koppett
Dollar Sign on the Muscle, Kevin Kerrane
Diamond Dreams, Stephen Brunt - very good look at franchise-building
Only The Ball Was White, Robert Peterson
Shoeless Joe and especially The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, W. P. Kinsella
Ball Four
Over the Edge, Jay Johnstone
Away Games, Life and Times of a Latin Baseball Player, great bio of Miguel Tejada as a minor leaguer by Marcos Breton and Jose Villegas
Early Innings, a collection of 19th-century pieces compiled by Dean Sullivan
The Science of Hitting, Ted Williams
The Physics of Baseball, Robert Adair
The Fireside Book of Baseball, all of them are great but I only own one

And one book I have not yet been able to buy, and haven't read all of, but is one of two books I am DETERMINED to buy soon...

Green Cathedrals, Philip Lowry

I loved Ball Four and Diamond Dreams. Right now I've got Lords of the Realm by John Helyar on my bookshelf and I hope to read it in the next month or two. Helyar co-wrote Barbarians at the Gate, the excellent bestseller on the takeover of RJR Nabisco in the late-80's. If Lords of the Realm is half as good as Barbarians, I'll be adding it to my list of favourites. Baseball and Billions by Andrew Zimbalist is another one on my shelf that I'll probably get to before the end of the year.

Believe it or not, I wouldn't rank Moneyball as one of my favourites. I read it a month after it came out, after some of the key figures in the book disputed its accuracy. In the back of my mind, I was always wondering if what I was reading actually happened the way Lewis said it did.

I'm also trying to think of all the Blue Jay books I've read and own. I know I still have the Stieb, Martinez, Alomar, Whitt and Bell bios. I also have The only way off the island, which is the Jay-centric book about the DR.

I just recently picked up The Hidden Game of Baseball by John Thorn and Pete Palmer

I tried to buy this to no avail - couldn't even find it on ebay. There is at least one copy in the Toronto library system though which will appear a few weeks after you reserve it.

Does anybody remember the title of a time travel/baseball novel featuring the roistering '69 Cincinnati Redlegs?

If I never get back by Darryl Brock

One of my favourites I havent seen mentioned - Why time begins on opening day Thomas Boswell - worth it for the title alone.

Pfizer, I agree that Gare Joyce's The Only Way Off The Island is quite good. Joyce doesn't quite have the background knowledge that Rob Ruck does (and which makes Ruck's book the best one out there on Dominican baseball, although Away Games is very good) and he's got that annoying, whiny "why isn't the world more like us" middle-class bias that seems to affect Canadians whenever they write travel books. But it's a great book for the Epy Guerrero content *alone*... plus tons of great discussions with and of the Jays' 80s Dominican players.

Let me just mention a couple that have not yet been mentioned. Jay Johnstone's book "Temporary Insanity" is perhaps the funniest baseball book I have ever read. I highly recommend picking it up if you can find it at a used bookstore somewhere. I guess Jay was quite the joker when he played...loved to torment Lasorda.

Another interesting one I read that is out of date now is "Fair Ball" by Bob Costas. He wrote it about 3 or 4 years ago and puts forth his arguments on how would save the game. Remember that it was written before the CBA last year. Still an interesting read though...and quick.

Interestingly, Jay, the Costas book was adopted almost wholesale by the Commissioner's Blue Ribbon Committee... which the Commissioner's Office promptly failed to act on, despuite his havign stacked the Committee in the first place!

That whole rigmarole reminded of nothing so much as Royal Commissions in Canada, always stacked with friends of the government of the day, who always come up with sensible if somewhat conservative solutions to problems, which the government, embarrassed at having been shown up by getting told that it wasn't doing enough, always utterly fail to act upon.

In the same way Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the best movie ever, The Year I Owned the Yankees is the best book ever written about baseball.

I enjoy Roger Angell's work, both non-fiction and fiction. (By the way, I just learned that Angell is E.B. White's step-son. Curse my genetics/blue-collar family!)

Did anyone read John Christopher's children's books? There was The Catcher With the Glass Arm, which I enjoyed reading as a young lad.

Gosh, I forgot to mention The Bronx Zoo, which, while not as funny as The Year I Owned the Yankees, is very, very funny.

Craig listed many of my favorites. Total Baseball is my favorite of all of the big historicals, including Bill James' Historical Abstracts. The Boys of Summer is outstanding. I read it when I was 18 or 19 and it's about an entirely different generation but the content transcended all of that. Nearly anything by WP Kinsella is recommended by me but especially The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. One of the best player biographies I've ever read is The Only Way I Know by Cal Ripken Jr. and Mike Bryan. Reading about Cal makes me want to be a better ballplayer AND a better person. The Final Season by Tom Stanton is about a man who makes it his mission to attend every home game during the final year of Tiger Stadium. It veers as much into family life as baseball but I thought it very good. Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time by Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein is pretty good...I disagree with much of it but that's what makes it fun.

Oh, and another thing...

The Catcher in the Rye: Not about baseball!

I went scurrying to find boxes of outdated Sports Illustrateds and other books to find the one baseball book I have read. Turns out rodent beat me to it. Nine Sides of The Diamond by David Falkner was an enjoyable book. With all the sabr books out there defense still hasn't become a real quantitative thing and this book seems as close as it gets to defining defensive greatness. It's also fun to read about Tony Fernandez as "... the game's outstanding young shortstop", Barry Bonds as a speedy and slick left fielder, and Ruben Sierra as a current star and future superstar. Oh how the times have changed since 1990 ( and I would know since I was ... 4 then ;-) )

I'm late arriving to this party, and many of my favourites have been mentioned already, so here are some "sleeper" prospects:

Bart Giamatti wrote beautifully about baseball. A Great And Glorious Game is brilliant, though relatively brief, much like his career as Commissioner.

It's no Ball Four, but Jim Bouton wrote a novel (with Eliot Asinof) called Strike Zone. Hardly great literature, but an interesting tale of one game, from the perspective of both the umpire and the pitcher. Complicating matters, the pennant's on the line and the ump, a man of integrity calling his last game before retirement, has been blackmailed by gamblers.

Home Game, by Toronto's Paul Quarrington, is out of print, but if anyone ever finds it, please buy two and let me know. Imagine a Roy Hobbs character teaming up with the sideshow attractions from a seedy carnival in a must-win game (loser leaves town) against a barely-fictionalized House Of David team. Clever stuff, even better than the author's acclaimed Whale Music.

I'd love to read Dollar Sign On The Muscle -- Craig, can you lend it to me when you're finished with Sparky?

You may be interested in an article I wrote a while ago at www.chicklit.com . Click on 'Book Bundles' and I think I'm pretty near the top of the list.

I'll add more books here when I can think of a decent list of them.

It's pretty dated, but I remember enjoying "Bang the Drum Slowly". Never saw the movie. And I got a kick out of something called (I think) "Sports Hall of Shame: Baseball", which documented some of the worst moments in the sport. Included were "5-cent Beer Night" (notorious here in Cleveland) and the Tippy Martinez triple-pickoff fiasco that is notorious in Toronto.

Bill

I'm currently reading Sparky Lyle's The Year I Owned The Yankees, which Coach lent me, and it's terrific.

I think the travelling secretary's computer was way ahead of its time, Pinella (I think he's the manager in the book) didn't have a chance competing with it.

This is the only baseball book I've read, but I should probably read it again as I was like 12 the first time I ran through it, must have missed a lot of stuff.

I was going to add more to this thread - but, between you, you seem to have gotten most the books I was going to mention!

I have The Boys of Summer, and it is great. I love The Glory of Their Times.

A few that haven't come up yet:

Mike Sowell's "The Pitch That Killed", about Ray Chapman and Carl Mays
William Curran's "Big Sticks" and "Mitts"
Robert W. Creamer's "Babe" and somebody's biography of Ty Cobb (I think it was by someone named Alexander)
"The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book" by Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris

And Jane Leavy's biography of Sandy Koufax is great.

It's Charles Alexander, and he wrote an equally entertaining bio of John McGraw. And Creamer's "Stengel" is even better than the Ruth book.

I really enjoyed Baseball Dynasties by Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein.

I know we aren't supposed to list Bill James, but I will say it was nice to come across four Baseball Abstracts when I was on vacation last summer. I picked them up for $5 each.

A Whole Different Ballgame: The Sport and Business of Baseball by Marvin Miller was a great read. Man I'd have liked to share a negotiating table with this guy on my side.

I remember enjoying Winfield: A Player's Life by Dave Winfield, though I haven't read it in more than 10 years.

Oh, and I own the Pete Palmer book mentioned above, I think I found that one right after I bough my first Abstract in '82. Couldn't tell you what box it is in now though.

I've also read about 3 fictional books by a Toronto columnist (I'm thinking Rosie Dimanno, though I'd be embarassed if that was true) about murders and how they related to the local Toronto basball team. They were pretty poor all in all, but since all the players were based on Jays, there was a little bit of insider stuff. Anyone know what I'm talking about? I googled it with no luck.

I think the name of the author was Alison Gordon. She covered the Jays back in the late 80's.

Pfizer, you're thinknig of Alison Gordon. She has another great book, Foul Balls about her time as the first woman beat writer in the AL. It's a great read, and I should have offered it above.

Whew, I just couldn't believe I'd buy a DiManno book, even in my youth.

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Great thread! There's a few books I'm going to have to take a look at.

One that I really like that hasn't been mentioned is Keith Hernandez's Pure Baseball. Keith watches a couple of games during the 1993 season and tells you what the players are thinking in each situation and stuff like that. It's a really good book for someone just getting into baseball who hasn't played the game before, but there's enough there for everyone.

Jim Bouton's I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally is a good read if you're a huge Ball Four fan. It doesn't stand well on it's own, though, so only read if you loved Ball Four. It's basically about how the sporting world reacted to Bouton's book and why he left baseball. The chapter about his meeting with Bowie Kuhn is pretty funny. I also liked his book with Elliot Asinof that Coach also mentioned.

Is anyone interested in baseball video games? I think it'd make another interesting discussion. Maybe I'll write a list of my all time favorites once my exams are over. Major League Baseball for the Intellivision and Baseball Stars for the NES will be way up there.

Mike

For video games, I have only three little words: Bad News Baseball.

My goodness the hours I wasted playing Baseball Stars is astonishing, but nothing compared to the hours wasted played High Heat 2003. I'm on my fourth full season. Seriously. And I'm married with a 14 month old child. It's an addiction my wif tolerates.

I also used to play Bases Loaded quite a bit, but that was more of a playing-against-your-friends type of game.

I missed this thread while I was away. I'll third the nomination of The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, although anyone who's read the book will have deduced from my Net handle that I'm a huge fan. Way better than Shoeless Joe, I believe -- TIBC would have made a way better movie as well, with John Cusack as Gideon Clarke.

I'll also add my voice in favour of I Was Right On Time -- Buck O'Neill was the best part of Ken Burns' documentary, and the book shows why.

An obscure book, now probably unavailable, is The Suitors of Spring, by Pat Jordan -- it's a series of mini-profiles written in the early '70s of some of the best or most notorious pitchers in the game. Tom Seaver is there, coming across as a perfectionist who's fairly unpleasant to be around (after losing the Cy Young Award to Fergie Jenkins one year, he named his dog "Ferguson Jenkins"), as well as Johnny Sain, Bruce Kison and Sam McDowell. But he also profiles lesser known talents like Bo Belinsky and Steve Dalkowski, a career minor-leaguer who's often acknowledged as the hardest thrower who ever lived (Ted Williams took one pitch from him and dropped his bat, saying he never even saw the ball, and walked away) -- he had no command, and once almost killed a batter with a pitch, scarring Dalkowski mentally for life. The whole book's a great read.

Tom Boswell's stuff in the '80s --- Cracking the Show, for instance -- was really good. And I quite enjoyed Nine Innings by Dan Okrent, an account of a single 1982 game between Baltimore and Milwaukee.

I haven't played any computer baseball games, but nothing will ever beat Strat-O-Matic anyway.

Now that everyone has joined in on the video game party, it's time to let my hair down and show the world the nerd I truly am.

I've been playing the Out of the Park series for several years now, and let me tell you, it is rather entertaining. It has a semi-realistic financial engine that supports free agency, arbitration, and minor league signings, and you can micro-manage a full minor league system. For some reason, I never really got into the other text simulators on the market.

As for graphical video games, I've been playing High Heat 2004 for PS2 and it is quite fun (aside from the "Disk Read Error"s that I've been getting).

It begins and ends with Diamond Mind for me. I was a Strat nut; DMB has replaced it completely in my leisure time, if not in my affections.

OOTP looks like tons of fun from a solo gameplay standpoint.

The most fun of any live-action baseball game I've ever had was the original "Hard Ball" for the Commodore 64. The easiest way to tell if a person is good or evil is whether they preferred to play the Champs (forces of all that is good, right, and true) or the All-Stars (minions of darkness).

I really enjoyed MLB '99 for about three months, too.

McCall, DeSoto, Contos, Barnes, Nyden, Morra, Mills, Darien, Euler.

The stuff dreams are made of.

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The best thing about Hardball for the C64 was the music.. the SID absolutely ruled. Both the theme and the "runners in scoring position" tunes have been in my head since I've been typing this.

I couldn't name the lineup from Hardball (though I definately remember McCall, DeSoto, Contos and Barnes). I think the only video game team I could do that for is the Tokyo Ninjas in the vastly underrated World Class Baseball for the Turbo-Grafx 16. What made WCB awesome was the fact that they didn't really Americanize the game, so it had this quirky Japanese feel to it, including tie games.

Mike

I vaguely recall Hardball, but I vividly remember this one left-handed pitcher who had the most wicked curve ball. Dang, I wish I could remember his name.

Anyone remember Nintendo's Based Loaded? You can't stop Boston's clean-up hitter Norkus, you can only hope to contain him.

Craig, you played Morra? O'Brien was so much better.

I wasted much of my 11th, 12th and 13th years playing Hardball for the C64. The game was so entirely unrealistic but I'd keep score anyway. McCall once had 260some steals for me in one 162 game season. Barnes hit 140 HR.

About the Dominican books

I think the first was one by John Krich called El Beisbol, more a travel book than a baseball book

Joyce's book is quite good--higher baseball quotient than Krich to be sure, maybe not what a SABR junkie would have in mind.

Ruck, eh, okay. There have also been a couple of historical accounts by Latin scholars. i like Mark Wingardner's fanatsy book about Hemingway, Negro League all-stars and Fidel Castro all coming together.