Recommendable Reds books?

[Red Thunder]

I plan to extend my knowledge about the Reds and therefore I'm looking for some good & solid literature. If anyone can help me out with a recommendation, which book(s) might be worth buying and of which ones I should better keep my hands off, please let me know.

In case there is some special literature about the days of the Big Red Machine, this would be of great interest for me as well.

Hopefully some of you can help me out ... thanks in advance!

[guernsey]

Big Red Dyansty - How Bob Howsam and Sparky Anerson Built the Big Red Machine. It's the definitive book on that era.

[westofyou]

Go to Amazon and check out Greg Rhodes

He wrote the following

Redleg Journal (a day by day history of the Reds)

Crosley Field

The book Guernsey mentioned

Reds in Black and White (100 years of Reds Photos)

For a look of the Reds (and the NL) Prior to the 50's a good one to find is Major League Baseball Clubs The National League, by Ed Fitzgerald

The Reds Media Guide is a great source of Red stats and facts, I got mine off EBay.

Bob Herzal and Ritter Collette wrote books on the Big Red machine, however they are out of print, check Ebay occasionaly.

For some info from the horses mouths check out the books by Pete, Morgan, JB and Sparky.

<small>[ 07-03-2002, 11:25 AM: Message edited by: westofyou ]</small>

[Redny]

"The Reds in Black and White", I don't remember the authors and since I am it work I can't check.

Try <a href="http://www.half.com," target="_blank">www.half.com,</a> and look under books. If you type in "Big Red Machine", you can find a number of books---most of the ones WOY suggested including an out of print one by Bob Hertzel that you can pick up used currently for under $2. Most of them are used, in varying conditions, but I've had good success buying from here. Be careful when ordering books on Big Red Machine not to pick up any books on communist Russia, unless you also enjoy that topic. Also, if you are interested in the Frank Robinson era Reds, a reliever named Jim Brosnan wrote a couple of books---I think one of them was called "The Long Season", or something close to that.

[westofyou]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I think one of them was called "The Long Season", or something close to that. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yep that's about the 1959 season and the other one is about the 1961 season.

[TeamBoone]

If I Never Get Back (Darryl Brock)

It's a "time travel" work of fiction taking a modern day guy back to the time of the 1869 Red Stockings. The background of the story is fact. A great read... entertaining and informative.

Here's the blurb on the back cover:

"Sam Fowler is taking a modern-day Amtrak home to San Francisco when an unscheduled stop somewhere west of Cleveland gives him the opportunity to stretch his legs. Instead, Sam finds that time has stretched and mysteriously transported him back to 1869.

Bewildered at first, Sam soon meets up with the Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball's first all-professional team, and begins to ride the rails with them on their first national tour across post-Civil War America. He encounters a political conspiracy, a get-rich-quick scheme with Mark Twain, and through it all, the shaky-legged beginnings of America's favorite pastime... before it ever was!"

[Roy Tucker]

Trying to envision my baseball shelf at home...

All of the aforementioned bokks by WOY, guernsey, Redny, Gary Nolan I can recommend highly. THe Greg Rhodes books are excellent.

Also, "The Cincinnati Game" by Lonnie Wheeler.

I sometimes poke around <a href="http://www.highboskage.com/AMAZON.HTM" target="_blank">High Boskage book web page </a> too.

[Roy Tucker]

Along the lines of TeamBoone's recommendation...

"The Cincinnati Red Stalkings" by Troy Soos, a Mickey Rawlings mystery - "Two years after the Chicago Black Sox scandal rocked major league baseball, the Cincinnati Reds are still trying to prove that they won the 1919 World Series, and that the White Sox didn't just hand it to them. Oliver Perriman, a Reds fan who'd like to remember happier times, wants to mount an exhibit of memorabilia featuring the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, who beat every team they played in a historic coast-to-coast tour. No sooner has the Reds management signed on to Ollie's plan, though, than he's shot to death, presumably by somebody who had an eye out for a particular bit of Red Stockings history. Could it have been the ball or the baseball cards he gave to the Reds' latest acquisition, rolling-stone utility infielder Mickey Rawlings? Mickey promises his live-in girlfriend, ex-serial queen Margie Turner, that he's not going to get involved this time, but it's too late. By the time Mickey uncovers evidence of a 50-year-old murder, somebody's already broken into his house looking for the fatal evidence, and somebody's trying to smear him by linking him to the gamblers who bought the 1919 Series. Will Mickey end up a ``permanent ineligible,'' the latest casualty of autocratic Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis? No way, as Mickey never says. But his fifth adventure (Hunting a Detroit Tiger, 1997, etc.) is stronger on baseball trivia the Reds have an especially rich tradition than on that untidy old mystery."

Archive request, please. These threads really help me out at Christmas time.

..... not that you're getting anything but coal, TB! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />