All-Time Favorite Baseball Books

[goreds2]

I have a variety of Sporting News from 1969 through 1978. Mainly during the baseball seasons. Most very good condition and good to read. The paper has held up well. Fun to read the articles on who happened to be hot that week and it was the best at covering the minor leagues.

A lot of Reds on the cover of course. 1969 had Lee May and Bobby Tolan. 1970 with Bench. Perez. Bernie Carbo. Even one with Vada Pinson with the Indians having a good month for them so he got the cover. Still can’t believe he didn’t make it to 3000 hits but he really slowed down from 1971-74.

The 1976 cover with the starting 8 is the best.

I loved the Sporting News as a kid. This was my favorite cover.

[Tony Cloninger]

There’s a couple of crates of paperbacks, magazines and baseball cards too.

I used to have Beta. That’s right Beta. Games recorded when the Dodgers were in Cincinnati on Channel 11. The times they appeared on Monday Night Baseball. I don’t recall what happened to those. When I went to VHS I know I threw those out 10 years before You Tube existed.

You can find Game 1 of the 1973 NLCS on You Tube. Not bad condition. Not that clear though either. Of course the homer by Bench is missing.

[Tony Cloninger]

I loved the Sporting News as a kid. This was my favorite cover.

Yup. Got that one. I was getting those delivered. Before USA Today started with their detailed sports section. This was the Internet.

My Lear favorite Reds cover is the August 1981 one with Foster. Griffey. Concepcion on the cover with the headline.
“Black Shoes and Free Agent Blues”.
They were all going to leave along with Dave Collins who was the only actual FA pending. The other 3 either had to be signed or were leaving after 1982. We know how that turned out.
They figured Paul Householder. Eddie Milner. Duane Walker could cover the OF along with Cedeno in the Ray Knight trade.
They had no one to cover SS. So Davey got to stay.

Bad enough the strike. The split season BS happened. Then you had to deal with the uncertainty of what the future held for your team.

They really cleaned house too. Mike LaCoss was released during ST. Paul Moskau was traded.

[chicoruiz]

Wow. What a treasure. I had no idea such a thing existed.

I did a Google search for “surf detergent baseball cards reds” and found a few copies for sale, if anyone is interested. They seem to have done them for a number of franchises.

[Roy Tucker]

I loved the Sporting News as a kid. This was my favorite cover.

My dad was in the advertising biz so we got complimentary subscriptions to a lot of magazines including The Sporting News. I know this is difficult to understand to people that have grown up with the internet, but there was *no* other source of baseball statistics (besides the weekly one big table in the Sunday paper). There was no mlb.com or baseball-reference.com or anything like that. We usually got it in the mail on a Saturday and I’d spend *hours* studying it. They broke it down team by team, hitting and pitching (no fielding) but it was a wealth of information that was found nowhere else. And I’d keep a whole seasons worth and go back and read earlier versions from April May June to see who was hot then but no longer.

And don’t get me started on the Dewey Decimal System and library card catalogues.

[westofyou]

My dad was in the advertising biz so we got complimentary subscriptions to a lot of magazines including The Sporting News. I know this is difficult to understand to people that have grown up with the internet, but there was *no* other source of baseball statistics (besides the weekly one big table in the Sunday paper). There was no mlb.com or baseball-reference.com or anything like that. We usually got it in the mail on a Saturday and I’d spend *hours* studying it. They broke it down team by team, hitting and pitching (no fielding) but it was a wealth of information that was found nowhere else. And I’d keep a whole seasons worth and go back and read earlier versions from April May June to see who was hot then but no longer.

And don’t get me started on the Dewey Decimal System and library card catalogues.

The drugstore or newsstand was a place you visited every week to get data, you probably went to the library more in a month than you have in the last ten years combined.

[redsmetz]

I was going to reiterate that one (it was in the article), as well as The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, written by W.P. Kinsella. Kinsella wrote Shoeless Joe - Iowa is way trippier.

[redsmetz]

I'd recommend just about anything written by Lonnie Wheeler. He had several autobiographies (as told to... - Gibson, Aaron, Piazza). I loved his "Bleachers, A Summer at Wrigley Field." And his final book about Cool Papa Bell was good. In his book Intangiball, he interviewed some RZ folks for that. Just a decent guy and a fine writer. Boss allowed him a second RZ id under his actual name when he was writing Intangiball, but his usual id here was Mace.

[BCubb2003]

I'd recommend just about anything written by Lonnie Wheeler. He had several autobiographies (as told to... - Gibson, Aaron, Piazza). I loved his "Bleachers, A Summer at Wrigley Field." And his final book about Cool Papa Bell was good. In his book Intangiball, he interviewed some RZ folks for that. Just a decent guy and a fine writer. Boss allowed him a second RZ id under his actual name when he was writing Intangiball, but his usual id here was Mace.

Have you read “The Cincinnati Game”?

[goreds2]

Has anyone read Pete Rose An American Dilemma ? Getting ready to begin reading it sometime soon. Just wanted some feedback.

[RedsBaron]

Has anyone read Pete Rose An American Dilemma ? Getting ready to begin reading it sometime soon. Just wanted some feedback.

I read it, I guess maybe seven years ago, as I have a hard cover edition of the book dated 2014. Written by Kostya Kennedy, I recall it was a well written and balanced account of Rose, good and bad. One of my favorite portions of the book was the account of Rose breaking down in September 2010 at a casino dinner/roast of Rose, where Pete sobbed, referred to Tony Perez as "like a brother to me," and admitting that he had "disrespected baseball." Frankly, had Pete taken that position from the beginning, I suspect MLB may have forgiven him, but, sadly, I think that was a rare moment of humility for him.

[Jaysland Red]

This is a great list. I’ve also enjoyed “Game Six” by Mark Frost and “3 Nights In August” by Buzz Bissinger.

[mbgrayson]

I would add a new one: "The Baseball 100" by Joe Posnanski.

[Rick Palmer]

Two I really like and would love to re read, A False Spring by Pat Jordan the story of his baseball life & Dollar Sign on the Muscle by Kevin Kerrane which is about the scouting and evolution of scouting.

[westofyou]

Two I really like and would love to re read, A False Spring by Pat Jordan the story of his baseball life & Dollar Sign on the Muscle by Kevin Kerrane which is about the scouting and evolution of scouting.

Dollar Sign is a must-read