One team in baseball's postseason will win four World Series games this month, so I thought I'd take advantage of that number by naming my four favorite baseball novels.
Interestingly, all four books offer elements of fantasy and/or require suspension of reader belief. Sort of like believing that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa didn't use pharmaceutical enhancements to smash the home-run records of Hank Aaron and Roger Maris.
Anyway, here's the literary lineup -- starting with the cleanup spot:
4. The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant by Douglass Wallop. A very engaging 1954 book about a middle-age man who sells his soul to the devil to become a great young player for perennial doormats the Washington Senators. The result? Joe Hardy and his teammates finally give the powerful Bronx Bombers some competition, and the hit Broadway musical Damn Yankees is soon born from Wallop's novel. Washington, by the way, was "first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League."
3. Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. This moving 1982 book is about baseball legends, reconnecting with fathers, and spawning an iconic movie -- 1989's Field of Dreams. The novel has references to J.D. Salinger that didn't make the film because of fears the reclusive Catcher in the Rye author would sue. But both the book and movie do feature the ghost of banned Chicago "Black Sox" star Shoeless Joe Jackson, the best hitter ever with that last name (sorry, Reggie).
2. The Natural by Bernard Malamud. Perhaps the most literary baseball novel, this 1952 book chronicles the amazing journey of Roy Hobbs from young phenom pitcher to mythical hitter. (His name is sort of an amalgam of Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby, a pair of racist dudes who had the highest lifetime batting averages -- .367 and .358 -- in Major League history.) The book also includes love interests, a shooting, and more. Made into an excellent 1984 movie starring Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs, and also starring a piece of molded wood as his baseball bat.
1. If I Never Get Back by Darryl Brock. Time-traveling Sam Fowler ends up joining the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings -- the first pro baseball team and a squad so successful (65-0) that it made the later 1927 Yankees look like Little Leaguers. Brock's 1990 book also features a mystery, a love story, visits to various cities, shootings, fistfights, Mark Twain appearances, and other catnip for readers. You'll turn the pages faster than a Nolan Ryan pitch!
If you have any time to answer a question while watching the playoffs, what are your favorite baseball novels (on or not on my list)?
Len Berman: Top 5 Sports Stories
Lloyd I. Sederer, MD: Who Is The Most Dominant Player In Professional Sports Today?
Al Eisele: How Babe Ruth Helped Me Get This Job
Top 10: Baseball Books To Read This Summer - AskMen
The nine best baseball books - Collections - Los Angeles Times
Also in Spanish, El Amante de Janis Joplin (The Lover of Janis Joplin), by Elmer Mendoza, [Tusquets 2001] is a border noir novel like Mendoza's other novels, and the protagonist is a fugitive from a murderous Mexican political boss and corrupt police who flees North, and becomes a rookie phenom for the Dodgers and the object of a Fernando Mania like cult for a brief moment.
Best baseball book I've read recently was nonfiction: John Thorn's "Baseball in the Garden of Eden." If yo think you know the game's early history, forget it. You don't. Thorn's research completely rewrites the game's history. An important work, not only of baseball history but of American history and the rise of entertainment culture.
Mets fan pulling for the Brewers this fall.
Yeah, Matty figures prominently in Greenberg's novel. Speaking of Mathewson, another excellent nonfiction book is his "Pitching in a Pinch" (remarkably still in print, with a new introduction by none other than E.R. Greenberg). A fascinating glimpse into the game and personalities of Matty's era.
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Bouton's book is terrific but it is not a novel. The Natural is a wonderful book, but the movie is awful.
Jim Bouton wrote it in collaboration with Eliot Asinof (8 Men Out author).
Strike Zone (1994) Due to unusual circumstances, a 36 year old rookie is called up by the Cubs to pitch the last game of the season, a game the Cubs have to win to make the playoffs. It's his first major league start. However, the fix is in an and the umpire won't let him buy a strike. Good book.
His personal statistics, hitting, timely hitting, and fielding certainly don't indicate he was tanking.
He was illiterate but, more cogently to this subject, 100% of the professional baseball players during that time, no exception, were roustabouts of one type or the other...when they were sober enough to be roustabouts and not passed out somewhere. None of them would have thought that shading a game or 2 or 2 would be even a venial sin much less a cardinal sin.
Truth is, Kennesaw Landis used this and banned more to consolidate his own power that because he was morally outraged.
Even more true, the only people morally outraged were gamblers on tyhe losing side of the thrown games and series winners.
Dave, another great topic. I will have to send my list by segment again because it is longer than 250 words. I must have too much time on my hands.
I can't quite limit it to 4, but each of these is terrific. In no particular order:
1. Hitting in the Clutch -- Brad Bauer Too damn funny! If it was non-fiction it would be Ball Four. Rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. 2006
2. If I Never Get Back--Darryl Brock. Time travel back to professional baseball's first years. Fascinating to learn of the early rules.
3. Havana Heat--Darryl Brock A lesser known work by Brock but a winner. 1920's. Cuban Leagues. An American pitcher tries to regain his form down there so he can come back up to the US major leagues.
4. The Boy Who Batted 1.000-- Troon McAllister version. Modernized with great descriptions of the physics of pitching and curve balls.
5. Play For A Kingdom--Thomas Dyja-- unbelievably good and little known. Set during the Civil War. In between battles (which are pretty vividly described so beware), Union and Confederate soldiers play baseball against each other on improvised diamonds.
6. The Curious Case of Sidd Finch--George Plimpton. Probably only a few remember this, but this novel was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated and presented as fact in SI's April 1, 1985 (I think) edition. Thousands of readers believed it was fact and SI never disclosed its duping them. Many didn't find out until Plimpton's novel was released shortly thereafter. One of the most fun hoaxes in my lifetime! An American Buddhist goes to Tibet or Nepal or someplace like that and learns the secret of how to throw a baseball with absolute accuracy at 168 miles per hour. His name is Sidd Finch. Two d's for Siddhartha. If you are of a certain age you probably had to read it in college...that's if you remember the 1960's. He joins the New York Mets organization and has to decide whether or not to join the bigs because he could end up ruining the game. The SI article leaves it hanging there and never reveals Sidd's decision. You had to buy the novel to find out. Clever marketing. This was Plimpton's first novel.
7. Breaking Balls--Marty Bell Funny, funny book. The title and its double meanings tells it all.
8. The Year I Owned the Yankees--Sparky Lyle A true fantasy.Sparky, playing himself in the novel, engineers the ouster of George Steinbrenner and takes over as owner of the Yankees.