The story of baseball is the story of heroes and villains, legends and little details, hope and disappointment.
This lineup of new baseball books tells that story in different ways, with new perspectives, fresh eyes — and, in one case, zombies.
History and trivia
“The Selling of the Babe: The Deal That Changed Baseball and Created a Legend” by Glenn Stout; Thomas Dunne Books (304 pages, $27.99)
If there’s anything in baseball that’s been written about more than Babe Ruth, it’s the impact of Babe Ruth being sold by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees in 1919.
The deal, the traditional wisdom runs, launched the Yankees dynasty, made Ruth a star, saved baseball after the Black Sox scandal, and laid a curse on the Red Sox that kept them from winning the World Series until 2004.
Fortunately, Glenn Stout, series editor for “The Best American Sports Writing,” has found a fresh take on the tale: that the sale of Ruth was driven more by his disruptive impact on the Red Sox and the internal politics of the American League than the financial dilemmas of the Red Sox’s long-villified owner, Broadway showman Harry Frazee.
While Stout relies on modern statistical tools to show that the Red Sox actually fared worse when Ruth was a slugger, he also does a great job of storytelling to show the Big Bambino’s impact on the game.
“If These Walls Could Talk: Milwaukee Brewers — Stories From the Milwaukee Brewers Dugout, Locker Room and Press Box” by Bill Schroeder with Drew Olson; Triumph Books (256 pages, $16.95)
If you watch Brewers games on television, you’ve heard a lot of Bill Schroeder’s stories before. But you haven’t heard all of them, and this book has more than enough stories to tide you over even during the longest rain delay.
It’s a grab bag of a book — part reminiscence, part history — but Schroeder and Olson don’t land on just the usual suspects from Brewers lore. There are, predictably, stories about Bob Uecker and the 1987 Easter Sunday game and the 1982 World Series, but there’s also a recounting of the horrible explosion in spring training in 1986, a roundup of player nicknames and their origins, and a look behind the scenes at the Brewers’ current operations.
“Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball With the 1911 New York Giants” by Maury Klein; Bloomsbury (400 pages, $28)
Before Tony La Russa, before Casey Stengel, there was John McGraw.
Considered the savviest baseball manager of his day — and it was a long day, running from the turn of the 20th century until 1932 — McGraw made the New York Giants into one of the dominant teams in baseball, even without many star players. His teams won three World Series (same as La Russa’s teams) and 10 pennants (four more than the former Cardinals manager’s), primarily thanks to McGraw’s knack for strategy and getting the most out of his players.
“Kings of Queens: Life Beyond Baseball With the ‘86 Mets” by Erik Sherman; Berkley (352 pages, $27)
The 1986 New York Mets might be one of the most written-about teams in baseball.
But what you don’t get to read about as much is what happened to them after they conquered the world. Erik Sherman, who has written about the team and its stars before, went back and interviewed 13 members of the team and the widow of the only member of the team in baseball’s Hall of Fame, Gary Carter.
The chapters in “Kings of Queens” on Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry are nothing new. But Sherman’s conversations with less chatted-up players from that team give a broader dimension to a team that everyone outside of Queens, N.Y., loved to hate.
“Baseball and the Law” by Louis N. Schiff and Robert M. Jarvis; Carolina Academic Press (1,040 pages, $120)
When it comes to baseball and the courts, Milwaukee has been an active player. Although it’s aimed at legal scholars, “Baseball and the Law” spells out many of the cases that made Milwaukee famous in baseball jurisprudence — cases that helped shape the game as it is today.
Among them: State of Wisconsin v. Milwaukee Braves Inc. (1965), in which an attempt to block the Braves’ move to Atlanta on antitrust grounds was rejected by a federal court and Milwaukee American Association vs. Landis, a case that reaffirmed the authority of commissioner of Major League Baseball (Kenesaw Mountain Landis) over big-league teams’ dealings with minor-league teams.
Baseball-themed fiction
“Double Switch” by T.T. Monday; Doubleday (224 pages, $25.95)
Johnny Adcock is an aging relief pitcher who does private detective work on the side, usually for fellow major leaguers. In “Double Switch,” the second Adcock mystery by T.T. Monday, he finds himself caught up in a tangled case involving a Cuban phenom, a professional stylist and some very violent people.
Adcock bears more than a passing resemblance to the old-school shamuses of your better class of noir detective fiction. But what makes him different is that Monday takes you deep inside Adcock’s attraction to the game on the field.
“The House of Daniel” by Harry Turtledove; Tor (336 pages, $28.99) (out April 19)
In the 1920s and ‘30s, semipro baseball teams barnstormed across America. One of the more memorable of those teams was the House of David, a team notable for its big, bushy beards, and playing on behalf of a Jewish religious community based in Michigan.
Alternate-history novelist Harry Turtledove takes that unusual team and puts it in an even more unusual world in “The House of Daniel,” part picaresque novel, part supernatural drama.
The House of Daniel is sponsored by a Christian sect in Cornucopia, Wis., but the story takes place in Texas and the American West of the mid-1930s — only in Turtledove’s version, in addition to the Depression and the Dust Bowl, there are vampires, werewolves and zombies.
The supernatural stuff sometimes gets in the way, but Turtledove does a good job evoking the world of the barnstormer, and captures the rhythm of a life punctuated by baseball.
“Bucky (Expletive) Dent” by David Duchovny; Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (296 pages, $26)
In actor David Duchovny’s second novel, a writer’s-blocked novelist with a day job as a peanut vendor at Yankee Stadium reconnects with his ailing father, a devout Red Sox fan, during the tumultuous summer of 1978.
When the son realizes the father’s health improves whenever the Red Sox win, he sets out to trick his father into believing his beloved team is winning the pennant despite — well, if you recognize the name in the title “Bucky (Expletive) Dent,” you know what really happens.
Duchovny sometimes loses the thread, and baseball itself is an in-and-out presence in his story. But the relationship between father and son — difficult but candid, warm but resistant to traditional forms of sentimentality — echoes the bonds forged through baseball in books like W.P. Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe.”
For younger readers
“Baseball History for Kids: America at Bat From 1900 to Today” by Richard Panchyk; Chicago Review Press (176 pages, $16.95). Ages 9 and older.
Most baseball histories aimed at younger readers hit the predictable bases — Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron. But Richard Panchyk, who’s also written kid-aimed books on World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt and New York City history, digs in, with fun trivia, engaging anecdotes and eye-catching visuals.
Panchyk brings the voices of the game to it as well, using his own interviews with some of the major leaguers who saw it firsthand, including Ralph Branca, who threw the pitch that yielded Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard ‘Round the World, and Don Larsen, who threw the only perfect game in World Series history.
And Panchyk laces the bright, readable book with enough offbeat content that grown-up fans will learn a thing or two, too, in a book that pulls no punches while keeping the love of the game intact.
“The Kid From Diamond Street: The Extraordinary Story of Baseball Legend Edith Houghton” by Audrey Vernick and Steven Salerno; Houghton Mifflin (40 pages, $16.99). Ages 4 to 8.
In 1922, 10-year-old Edith Houghton joined a professional women’s baseball team called the Philadelphia Bobbies. Her true story is the focus of “The Kid From Diamond Street,” a sweet look at Houghton’s time with the team, including a remarkable trip the Bobbies made to Japan.
Audrey Vernick, whose 14 picture books include four about baseball, does a nice job balancing Houghton’s amazing tale with the fact that she’s also a young girl having an awesome adventure — and not just because it’s a girl having it. (A note from the author at the end of the book continues Houghton’s story through adulthood.)
“The Hero Two Doors Down” by Sharon Robinson; Scholastic (198 pages, $16.99). Ages 8 and older.
When Jackie Robinson moved his family to a Brooklyn apartment in 1948, the baseball great befriended a neighborhood boy who idolized Robinson almost as much as he did his father.
In “The Hero Two Doors Down,” Sharon Robinson — Jackie’s daughter, and a writer who created a baseball-themed curriculum designed to build character and empower students — uses that real-life story as the basis for this story of friendship, understanding and bridging different cultural experiences through communication.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
