My favorite baseball books and films

Not that you care, but I’m just throwing this out since I was thinking about it.

If you want analysis or literary critique you aren’t getting any.  If you want to argue literary merit, you’re in the wrong place.  They are here because I put them on my list because I like them.  I consider them essentials.  There are more I could put on the list, but I haven’t run across them recently.  When I do, I may make a second list.

There are well known baseball books that are not on this list – probably not because I haven’t read them but more likely because I didn’t like them as much as these.

Baseball books by people I know are in alphabetical order by author.  The books and films by people I don’t know (but probably would like to know) are in the order I thought of them or found them on my shelves or wherever I had put them down.

By people I know:

Nonfiction:

Bums, Pete Golenbock

Baseball’s Starry Night, Paul Kocak

The Umpire Strikes Back, et. al.  Ron Luciano, David Fisher

The Juju Rules: Or, How to Win Ballgames from Your Couch: A Memoir of a Fan Obsessed, Hart Seely

Poetry:

O Holy Cow!: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto, Phil Rizzuto, Hart Seely and Tom Peyer

The Cutoff,  Jay Rogoff

Where Memory Gathers, Ed Ward 

Line Drives. 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, Brooke Horvath, Tim Wiles, ed.

By people I don’t know, but would probably like to know:

Fiction:

Great American Novel, Philip Roth

Poetry:

On Days Like This, Dan Quisenberry

Becoming Joe Dimaggio, Maria Testa

Baseball, I Gave You All the Best years of My Life, Richard Grossinger, Lisa Conrad, ed.

Non Fiction:

The Official Rules of Baseball

Beadle's Dime Base-Ball Player; a Compendium of the Game, comprising Elementary Instructions of this American Game of Ball: together with the Revised Rules and Regulations for 1860; Rules for the Formation of Clubs; Names of the Officers and Delegates to the General Convention, &c. , Henry Chadwick

Men In Blue, Larry Gerlach

A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti, A. Bartlett Giamatti

Boys of Summer, (and The Summer Game and The Era),  Roger Kahn

Money Ball, Michael Lewis

A Game of Inches:  The Stories Behind the Innovations that Shaped Baseball:  The Game 
       on the Field (Volume 1), Peter Morris

Men at Work, George Will

Prophet of the Sandlots, Mark Winegardner

The Long Season, Jim Brosnan

Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, Jules Tygiel

The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence S. Ritter

Triumph & Tragedy in Mudville, Steven Jay Gould

October 1964, David Halberstam

The Catcher Was A Spy: The Mysterious Life Of Moe Berg, Nicholas Dawidoff

The Best Game Ever: Pirates vs. Yankees: October 13, 1960, Jim Reisler

Baseball films I’ve been in: 

Signs of the Time
 (http://www.signsofthetimemovie.com)


Baseball films I haven't been in, but like them anyway:

Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns

The Lost Son of Havana  (the story of Luis Tiant’s return to Cuba to visit his family)

Money Ball

When It Was a Game (Vol 1-3)
 Bang the Drum Slowly

Field of Dreams

The Kid from Left Field  (because the title of my blog came from a line in the film)