To all of you lurkers ... I'll admit that I've only been registered for either site (here or the all-baseball site) for a few months, and I haven't recieved a single spam message that I could tie back to here. Yes, it is painless.

Favorite Baseball book ... Moneyball comes to mind, but probably because it is recent. Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is an easy read, and very enjoyable. But my favorite may be a small coffee table book I picked up off a clearence table named Baseball's 50 Greatest Games by Burt Sugar. Each game is broken down inning by inning, as you would expect. What is really entertaining is that Sugar goes into the lead up to the game in question. What led up to this particular game.

SPOILER ALERT

For instance, #1 is the "shot heard around the world" game. Sugar writes about how the Giants got to that game from being 13 games out of first at midseason. Things that a casual fan probably wouldn't know.

Favorite baseball book...I read "Summer of '49" by Halberstam in high school and always enjoyed it

The Natural -- Of all the baseball novels, it does the best at capturing the truth/legend split that happens in baseball to this day (e.g., Derek Jeter's fielding ability).

It's tough not to read the book without picturing Robert Redford, but it works. And after you read The Natural, read The Fixer, also by Malamud.

So many good ones....Probably the 1986 James absract though....first book that really opened my eyes as to how baseball games are truly won and lost.

Someone say Schwag?!

Favorite baseball book ever: "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." by Robert Coover.

Ball Four by Jim Bouton

Looks like someone beat me to Summer of '49. For the sake of diversity, I'll go with another personal favorite: The Year the Mets Lost Last Place.

Moneyball, but then I haven't read too many baseball books.

I think my favorite baseball book is 'The Politics of Glory' by Bill James (later given a lame and unimaginative title that will not be spoken...).

It is a bar room discussion honed by James' unique analytical skills and excellent writing, with a little historical context thrown in. To me, it is about baseball AND about thinking, two things that go together well. Other contributions by James serve this synergy, but for whatever reason 'Politics' seems to stand out for me.

The Glory of Their Times, by Lawrence Ritter - an oral history of baseball's early years.

Favorite Baseball book?

Well, I used to read the old Elias Baseball Analysts when I was back in middle school...and probably the '88 version of The Rotisserie League Baseball book by Glen Waggoner introduced me to Fantasy Baseball...I also enjoyed reading John Helyar's "Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball"...

Always a tough question!

I can open up the Historical Abstract any time and read a page or two -- I've probably been through the entire thing 10 times!

But, the one that I enjoyed and probably learned the most from is "Lords of the Realm" by John Helyar. It's an history of the business side of baseball: the reserve clause, how the players won the right to free agency, etc.

I'm a big Alan Schwarz fan, so I'll say The Numbers Game.

There are so many good ones, but Feeding the Green Monster by Rob Neyer is one of my favorites. I even gave it to my wife, and she gobbled it up. It was easy to follow the Red Sox season throught Neyer's eyes, and entertaining to boot.

- Catcher in the Rye -

There are others?

Id have to go again with Moneyball.

When I was a kid, there was a series of (fictional) books that followed a high school catcher named Robbie as he made his way to college ball and eventually ended up in "The Show". I haven't read many baseball books since then (Moneyball being the only one of recent memory), but back then I couldn't read those books enough.

Of course, I'd probably groan in disgust if I picked one up for a few minutes now. :-p

My favorite baseball book is the The Physics of Baseball, hands down. Woohoo science.

Bob H

Being a life long A's fan I would have to go with Moneyball.

Have not read the summer of 49' but have read October 64 by Halberstram and it was a good read may have to try it.

Ball Four

P.S. I love the Arrested Development reference FRIGHTENED INM8 2.

The New Bill James Historical Abstract is obviously one of those rare books that you can just pick up and read a section of over and over again.

I'm also very fond of "Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers." A very enjoyable read.

My Favorite has to be Weaver on Strategy, a really tremendous book and a quick read to boot.

Once More Around the Park : A Baseball Reader
by Roger Angell is a good read.

Dave F:
"The greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told"
Edited by Jeff Silverman.

Great biographical essay on Ty Cobb, and many other classic short stories / essays.

The Natural - I remeber reading it in high school after I had seen the movie and actually being mad at the book for not having the same ending. As I got older, I began to appreciate each for what it is - baseball as history, and baseball as memory, i.e., how we choose to remeber and glorify certain events and players isn't always as they actually happened

Well the honest answer is the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract - but I also really liked the Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers too.

The 2002 baseball prospectus, because it was my first. I was simply looking for an edge in my fantasy league, and instead found the most interesting crapper reading around.

#1's Ball Four--no book has made me laugh out loud as much. Honorable mentions go to "Penant Races", "You Gotta Have Wa" , and "Moneyball".

I bought my first glove, a Mickey Mantle model, with cigar rings from my grandpa's cheap El Producto cigars and $5 in 1962 when living in Brooklyn.

For me, Dynasty : The New York Yankees 1949-1964 by Peter Golenbock was a great read. My Dad had become a Yankee fan back growing up in Cuba back in the 40's listening to the games on short wave radio and passed on the legacy to me.

I've passed on the legacy to my 12 year old, although we do root for the hometown Padres as well.

Bobby Richardson Day and Mickey Mantle day at the Stadium is still in my memory 40 years later and I was there for Phil Rizzuto day too.

The Pitch That Killed by Sowell.

Outstanding study of the Chapman incident. Highly recommended.

Ball Four

I was laughing out loud.

Favorite book: The Glory of Their Times. I loved it at 10 and at 34, and will probably re-read it as long as I have eyesight.

Close seconds: All Bill James Abstracts, Nice Guys Finish Last, Ball Four, Moneyball, The Real McGraw

Best Book OF All time, that's tough. Best book I've read this year:
Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season
by Stewart O'Nan, Stephen King

This book goes thru day by day for every game of the season. Great Book.

Isn't this the book that started it all for everybody?

Casey At The Bat!!!

Always a difficult question, but I'd say I've renewed my respect for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

'The Wrong Stuff' by The Spaceman...Bill Lee.

A bit off the beaten track, but for offseason reading, every few years I turn to Phillip Roth's, "The Great American Novel."

It's about the mythical and hysterical Patriot League, whose history, which involves substance-abusing ballplayers, is lost in the whirlwind of Communist plots, a capitalist scandal, and a House of Representatives Committee investigation.

Totally fictional...couldn't happen in real life, now could it?

Moneyball

gotta go with the New Historical Abstract, but the book I'm currently reading (The Black Prince of Baseball: Hal Chase and the Mythology of the Game) is pretty damn good too.

Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Great Experiment.

Excellent history.

I've got several that I love equally in their own ways:

- The Wrong Stuff (Bill Lee)

- Dollar Sign on the Muscle: pretty much the anti-Moneyball, but it's a big reason I'm such a draft and minor-league junkie

- Moneyball, though I had some real problems with Lewis' comments on two of my favorite baseball people, Grady Fuson & Marshall McDougall

- The Numbers Game: I thought I knew a lot about statistics. Then I read this book.

- May the Best Team Win (Zimbalist): it's concise, and does almost as good a job as the late Doug Pappas at exposing the owners' lies and fabrications regarding finances

You Gotta Have Wa, by Robert Whiting.

Juiced by Jose Can't Say So.......

No really The Greatest Baseball stories ever told by J. Silverman is good.

I Had a Hammer by Hank Aaron.

One of the greatest Autobiogs ever.

"Lords of the Realm" by John Helyar

"Pennant Race" by Jim Brosnan.

This relief pitcher paved the way for "Ball Four" with 1959's "The Long Season", an in-season diary of his tumultuous year with St. Louis & Cincinnati. "Pennant Race" was his follow-up, a season-long diary about being a part of the 1961 Reds, possibly the biggest out-of-nowhere pennant winner in the past 50 years.

A lot of my favorites have been mentioned, so I'll go with a relatively obscure but brilliant novel: "Sometimes You See It Coming," by Kevin Baker, which combines the legends of Ted Williams, Roberto Clemente, Ty Cobb and a bunch of other immortals into the personality of John Barr, a player so great he lifts the Mets to 13 straight pennants. Funny as hell -- particularly the passages involving the Mets' crackpot Billy Martin-esque manager and a reporter called Dickhead Barry Busby -- and also kind of poignant.

The Bronx Zoo. Only because I read it before I read Ball Four.

Ball Four, followed by the Bill James Historical Baseaball Abstract and Five Seasons.

Diamond Appraised, Wright/House.

Ball Four, followed closely behind by the eternal classic, Baseball for Dummies by Joe Morgan (kind of by Joe Morgan, anyway. His name and picture are on the cover, but another guy's name is there too, and I suspect Joe was too busy working to get Dave Concepcion into the HOF to write a book.).

"Please don't eat the bones"...don't even know if you can still find it. Basically the Best of the Abstracts.

I'm all for prizes.

Glad to see Kehane's Dollar Sign on the Muscle and Brosnan's books mentioned. They shouldn't be forgotten.

But I'll go with one of the first baseball books I read, and still one of the best: The Kid from Tompkinsville by John R.Tunis.

Written in 1940, the book concerns fireballer Roy Tucker who makes the Dodgers, throws a no-hitter, ruins his arm, and comes all the way back to star as a hitter. Based, I guess, on Smokey Joe Wood, and an obvious precursor to The Natural, it's a book for kids that extends the genre by capturing the innocence of the game when it was mainly a game.

I would have said "Great American Novel" - the story of the Ruppert Mundys who were banished from their home park and played an entire season on the road.

I would have said "Bronx Zoo" the true story of the hijinx my least favorite team of all time, the 78 Yankees. (I'm not a Sox fan, I'm a Dodger fan.)

But I hate repeating people.

I'd say the "New York Yankees Haters Handbook," but I'm not sure it qualifies as a "book."

I'll go with "The Umpire Strikes Back" by Ron Luciano. I'm sure if I re-read it, I'd find it pretty dumb, but it made me laugh to the point of tears when I was 11 or so.

The Worst Team Money Could Buy about the NY Mets of the mid 90's by Bob Klapisch and John Harper.
I laughed, I cried I lived through it all

A False Spring by Pat Jordan

my favorite baseball book is always the next one I'm going to read. In this case, I just, today, picked up a copy of Leigh Montville's biography of Ted Williams (which I'll get to as soon as I finish volume 1 of Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and then Vol 2 of HST's Gonzo letters). so i'm hoping for bonus points for good literary taste and the same first name. rgds, will

My favourite baseball book is the first one I ever had - "Baseball's Back in Town", a history of baseball in Toronto that was published shortly after the Blue Jays debut. I got it when I was 7 or 8, and rediscovered it (the very same copy) about 20 years later, during a move. It still had the original sale price - $3.99 (CDN, no less) penciled in on the inside cover.

As far as fiction goes, I always found "If I Never Get Back", by (I believe) Darryl Brock an enjoyable read.

I'd be lying if I said a different book from "Moneyball."

Damn you Michael Lewis for writing such a compelling story. Or was that Billy Beane, Joe Morgan?

Either Summer of '49 or Stolen Season, but I think I'll go with the latter.

Like Bill James said, "All of the good [ones] were taken"...Moneyball, Sandy Koufax (Leavy), and Shoeless Joe are among my favorites.

But the ones that really struck a cord with me were the Matt Christopher books, especially the baseball ones: The Kid Who Only Hit Homers, Miracle at the Plate, The Catcher With the Glass Arm, The Spy on Third Base are all classics. I still own the copies I had when I was 8 years old or so.

In honor of good Friday, and none of the higher-ups at work being around to stop me, I pissed my day away reading "Juiced". What a windbag... Not even close to my favorite, but at least now I can bash it with a clear conscience.

I'd be lying if I said my favorite wasn't Moneyball, but I put "Three nights in August" on hold at the library today when I picked up Jose's rag, so that could change in a week or so.

Leigh Montville's "Ted Williams, American Hero" is easily my favorite baseball-bio book.

Favorite Baseball Book: Cup of Coffee: The Very Short Careers of Eighteen Major League Pitchers by Rob Trucks

A really compelling look at 18 men who actually made to the Bigs, but just didn't stay there very long. The author concludes his intro; "It's never just one thing that keeps a genuine talent from reaching the major leagues. It's never just one thing that causes a player's stay to be such a short one."

I have worked in and around bookstores and libraries most of the past 20 years, and this is the first book to introduce me to regular guys who were terrific athletes. This is the first book that didn't buy into all the glitz and glam and squalor that can be pro sports. What this book did was allow the gentle reader to realize what hard work and good fortune it takes to make it to the Major Leagues.

Ball Four. Not just a great baseball book, but a great book. I've read it at ages 10, 20, and 40, and it gets better with each read.

Moneyball is second.

Veeck as in Wreck - great read about one of the more interesting owners in the history of the game.

The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams. Still refer to it to coach the little league kids in hitting.

I have to go with Ball Four. I read it as a teenager and it opened my eyes to the behind the scenes portion of the game.

Win Shares - Bill James isn't the best statistician around, but he's got an amazingly creative analytic approach to answering baseball questions. Better yet, he asks the most interesting questions.

The Historical Abstract just keeps going and going. I still pick it up to read a few pages at a time. I don't think Moneyball is that great of a book, but it did get me back in to following baseball again after a long layoff.

In the last couple years, I read a few random baseball books, such as Moneyball and Pete Rose's lousy book. The one book that I did enjoy was The Ticket Out : Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw. I would recommend it to any baseball fan.

I don't know if I'd call them favorites, but there's "Rhubarb", by H. Allen Smith, about a cat who inherits ownership of a lousy Yankee team (it's funny as hell, like all H Allen Smith books). Then there's the original of the "Damn Yankees" theme: "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant," by Douglas Wallop. Both are in print and available through Amazon.

All of the John Tunis books were well-thumbed by me from the Rancho Park library in LA when I was 10-12.

3 years later & I'm still regularly looking things up in Win Shares, so it has to be high up on the list. I keep hoping BP will come out with an equivalent book on WARP.

My favorite book though is probably "Creating the National Pastime" by G.Edward White. It follows the business of baseball from the startup of the AL until the first franchise shifts of the '50s. I found it to be a better read than "Baseball & Billions" & "Lords of the Realm", both of which I did enjoy.

I'm not much into the "lyrical little bandbox"-style of baseball writing of Kahn/Updike/Will and others, but there are exceptions to ever rule. Not sure that it's my favorite baseball book (wasted way too many hours of my life reading so many), but Teammates, Halberstam's book about the relationships among Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dom Dimaggio and Johnny Pesky was special for me. While all four were great (for at least part of their careers), all but Williams were very successfull in all aspects of their life besides baseball. Very interesting to read in combination with the Montville bio of Ted Williams.

Moneyball
-James from Evansville IN

It's Moneyball but I have to mention my off-the-wall favorite: "Slugging It Out in Japan" by Warren Cromartie. The book was far more interesting than I thought it would be.

Gotta be Ball Four by Jim Bouton and it isn't even really close. Moneyball was great but I'll never forget the constant looks I got because I couldn't stop laughing while reading the book.

- Brian from Seattle, WA

I'm a big fan of Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups, just for the argument factors it brings with it, and Moneyball is an excellent read (obviously). The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers is great as well, because of my obsession with knuckleballers.

Marc Normandin, Dracut, MA

"The Last Best League" by Jim Collins

If you enjoyed Moneyball I think you would enjoy this one....it is the same style although it is about the 2002 Chatham A's season up in the Cape Cod League.

I also really enjoyed Rob Neyer's "Feeding the Green Monster"

My top three are Ball Four, the Summer Game, and the Boys of Summer. A couple of unsung favorites:

The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book, by Brendan Boyd and Fred Harris

Slouching Towards Fargo, by Neil Karlen

I found a copy of The Lords of the Realm recently and halfway through it, I can see why it's so acclaimed. Great stuff.

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by WP Kinsella.

A Pitcher's Story by Roger Angell

ps-Does anybody remember the title of the book that SI excerpted last year about Japanese baseball, which included an in-depth look at Hideki Matsui and Ichiro?

"The Great American Novel"
Now I laugh whenever I hear Gil Meche's name.

Everything I could think of (the others were "Moneyball," the Abstracts, "A False Spring," "Shoeless Joe," and anything by Angell) has been mentioned at least once.

I didn't read through all the comments, but my favorite baseball of recent vintage is Rob Neyer's "Feeding the Green Monster." It didn't get much critical praise, but I read it on a flight from Maine to Kansas City that spring and it made the trip fly by!

Purely for the nostalgia of being 8 and drunk on baseball, I gotta go for David Nemec's Great Baseball Feats, Facts And Firsts. Also Phil Roth's Great American Novel is wicked.

Hey, free stuff (maybe)! I know it's one of the bigger cliches out there, but I have to go with Glory of Their Times. Just an amazing work.

I'd have to say my favorite is Five Seasons by Roger Angell. I love all the Bill James books and most of the other analytical works and the histories and everthing, but I think that Five Seasons catches the magic of the game and the reasons that we, or at least I, fell in love with. The opening essay in chapter one where Roger talks about the primal need to throw a ball and the way it fits perfectly into the human hand is one of the best pieces of writing I've read period on any topic.

Favorite baseball book.... I'll have to with Moneyball. But if you are a writer looking for a great book to read, try "A Sports Writer's Life" by Gerald Eskenazi.

Ball Four.

The Lords of the Realm, John Helyar

Oh, my favorite baseball book has to be Ball Four. Is there a more entertaining recounting of 'the good old days?' I think not.

Recently I guess I'd say 'Moneyball.' As a kid I definitely fell in love with a 'The Iowa Baseball Confederacy' (Kinsella) and 'If I Never Get Back' by Darryl Brock. I have a feeling both of those might still hold up pretty well.

The Natural was one of my favorite movies, I'd like to see how the book is.

Veek as in Wreck

Most of my favs have been mentioned (Ball Four, Shoeless Joe, If I ever get back, Moneyball, Feeding the Green Monster) but I'll add a few more of my favs:

- The Celebrant (Eric Rolfe Greenberg_
- The Catcher was a Spy (Davidoff)
- Pure Baseball (Keith Hernandez)