Baseball Book Blog

The latest edition to my baseball library is an interesting read called Walkoffs, Last Licks and Final Outs.  It’s an interesting tome that has game descriptions and box scores of some of the more interesting finishes in baseball.  You’ve got a lot of what you’d expect, like Game Six of the 1975 World Series and Game Seven of the 1960 World Series but there’s also a lot of more interesting and lesser known finishes.  Game seven of the 1926 World Series is in here, in which Babe Ruth was caught stealing to finish the whole series as well as several final outs at several ballparks like Ebbets Field and Tiger Stadium.

There’s a lot in here and it’s organized very well.  Want to just check out the ballparks section?  That’s no sweat as is the final at bat of several high profile players.  Authors Bill Chuck and Jim Kaplan did a very nice job with this book.

The latest edition to the library was actually something I preordered several months ago.  Indians Journal continues a series of books authored by John Snyder and the differ from your standard statistical look at a team.  These books are more like periodic diary of each season along with some general stats and information.  The decade by decade looks are also interesting and provide some additional historical content for the team.  There’s also some information on pre-Cleveland Indians teams which includes some content on the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

You can pick up similar books on the Reds, Red Sox, Cardinals and Cubs.  I’m anxiously awaiting a Tigers Journal.

I just received a copy of Working at the Ballpark by Tom Jones.  It has over 50 interviews with professionals who work at the ballpark including executives, managers, players and even vendors.  No Tiger connections, but it looks like a solid read and I’ll give it a full review when I’m finished with it.

I’m also reading Juicing the Game by Howard Bryant.  I may be meeting Mr. Bryant in April so I wanted to make sure I could say I had read his book.  The title is a little deceving because while it’s about steroids in baseball, it’s also a great business of baseball text.  In fact it kind of picks up right where Lords of the Realm leaves off.