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| TODAY: Friday, May 12 | |||||
| Reading does you good Special to ESPN.com | |||||
| If baseball inspires the best writing of any sport, it also inspires the
most writing of any sport. We're midway through
spring training and the nation's bookshelves are again sagging farther under
the weight of the season's literature hopefuls than if Tony Gwynn was
sitting on them.
On one shelf is Joe Morgan's "Baseball for Dummies." Next to it is Johnny
Bench's "Idiot's Guide to Baseball." And a few shelves over from that is
Darryl Strawberry's "Drug Addiction for Idiots and Dummies."
But as you fight through the season's reading list (Look out! Tom Glavine
has a book explaining the inner game!), here is our own version of Oprah's
book club with 10 classic baseball books that should be in every fan's
collection. If you haven't read one or more of these books, do yourself a
favor: grab a copy and stay up late in the batting cage and enjoy a long
night of reading pleasure.
10. "Seasons of the Kid" by Richard Ben Cramer. Reading this profile of Ted
Williams, the best I've ever read about anybody, is the next best thing to
watching the Splinter take batting practice on a summer afternoon at Fenway.
9. "A False Spring" by Pat Jordan. Jordan's powerful and touching story of
how his big league hopes died in the minors should be required reading for
any hormone-crazed Little League father with visions of million-dollar
contracts for their sons.
8. "Sandlot Peanuts" by Charles Schulz. This collection of baseball-related
"Peanuts" strips is out of print but worth more than an autographed Joe
Schlabotnik baseball. Which Charlie Brown actually receives the same night
Schlabotnik is fired. "Try not to cry Joe," Charlie Brown says, "It makes
the ink run."
7. "Shoeless Joe" by W.P. Kinsella. The movie "Field of Dreams" was based
on this book -- and it's just as good as the movie.
6. "The Great American Baseball Card Flipping and Trading Book" by Brendan
C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris. Guaranteed to make you nostalgic for a simpler
time before luxury suites and agents, back when baseball cards were stored
in one of two places: in a shoebox or between a bicycle's spokes.
5. "The Great American Novel" by Philip Roth. Absolutely the funniest book
ever written about baseball. Or about anything else, for that matter.
4. "The Sports Encyclopedia of Baseball" by David Neft, Richard Cohen and
Michael Neft. There are a lot of reference books, many weighing more than
David Wells after a weeklong session at Krispy Kreme. But with each passing
year, I find myself relying more and more on this thick, portable paperback
to provide the most important information on any given season.
3. "The Boys of Summer" by Roger Kahn. A loving tribute to the heroes of
youth and their lives many summers later.
2. "Five Seasons" by Roger Angell. Most any volume of Angell's New Yorker
writings could fit on this list, but this collection from the 1970s is the
writer at the top of his game.
1. "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton. The preferred edition of the best baseball
book ever written is the old paperback with the green title, dogeared from
repeated readings, the earliest under the bedcovers and the illumination of
flashlight. Too many players followed Bouton with candid, tell-all books but
none provided his humor, insight and perspective. Or had the benefit of Joe
Shultz as a major character.
The book's final line is among the best ever written about the game: "You
spend a great deal of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns
out it was the other way around all the time."
These books maintain their grip, as well. It's like Disneyland. No matter
how many visits you make, it's always great to return.
Jim Caple is the national baseball writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has a website at www.seattle-pi.com. | ALSO SEE Strawberry starts rehab, wants to 'take control' Off Base: Smackdown Baseball is next  | ||||