Baseball season begins, a new season and all the new hope that goes with a new season. Of course, as pleasant as idling a summer afternoon away with a baseball game on the lawn or t.v., is reading about baseball! (…in the shade from a tree or cool corner of a porch…) Several summers ago blogging here we cataloged part of the collection of baseball books, which has grown since (not only was 2013 a good year for the Red Sox it was a good year for ODY buying baseball books). These new titles are given here as a “starting line-up”:
- The Stars are Back: the St. Louis Cardinals, the Boston Red Sox, and Player Unrest in 1946 by Jerome M. Mileur
- Nikkei Baseball : Japanese American Players from Immigration and Internment to the Major Leagues by Samuel O. Regalado
- Mr. Wrigley’s ball club : Chicago & the Cubs During the Jazz Age by Roberts Ehrgott
- Long Shot by Mike Piazza
- Becoming Big League: Seattle, the Pilots, and Stadium Politics by William H. Mullins
- Smoky Joe Wood: the Biography of a Baseball Legend by Gerald C. Wood
- A Chance to Win: Boyhood, Baseball, and the Struggle for Redemption in the Inner City by Jonathan Schuppe
- American Pastimes: the Very Best of Red Smith edited and with an introduction by Daniel Okrent
- Stories & Other Writings by Ring Lardner
The last title is a Library of America edition edited by Ian Frazier–Lardner is the author of the short story “You Know Me Al,” and one of the great baseball writers of the early twentieth century. If you don’t know Ring Lardner’s work there is an imperative read for at least one summer inning.