seekingferret (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seekingferret) wrote2015-07-23 08:43 am
seekingferret) wrote2015-07-23 08:43 am
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Baseball book recommendations instead of Moneyball
-David Halberstam's Summer of 49. My absolute favorite baseball book, it's a social history of the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry in 1949, looking at the way fandom was evolving, baseball was evolving, cultural awareness was evolving. It's a fantastic book by itself, but I think on its own it would be a little problematically parochial by modern standards, since it evokes a nostalgia for a particular kind of white middle class East Coast coming of age experience. However, it's paired beautifully with Halberstam's October 1964, an elegy for the end of the Yankee dynasty that doubles as a social history looking at how NYC life had changed in the intervening decade and a half, so that nostalgia has a more hard-headed, realistic companion. Just magical books about the relationship between baseball and a city.
-Peter Golenbock's Bums, an impeccably detailed if totally subjective and wonderfully massive oral history of the Brooklyn Dodgers, just jam packed with lovely stories about fans.
-John Helyar's Lords of the Realm, the best baseball business book I've ever read, by the author of Barbarians at the Gate, perhaps the best business narrative I've ever read. A sobering look at the financial relationships between players, owners, and the commissioner's office.
-Jim Bouton's Ball Four, the ultimate player's memoir, though I have other lesser known favorite player memoirs, like Bill Lee's The Wrong Stuff.
-Tim Carver's Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans, so utterly brilliant at dissecting the technical details of game management. Not at all at odds with sabermetrics, though I imagine Michael Lewis might see it as such, because Carver is so good at talking about unmeasurables and Michael Lewis is an idiot.
-W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, the inspiration for Field of Dreams, but it's much, much better and much, much weirder than the movie.
-David Halberstam's Summer of 49. My absolute favorite baseball book, it's a social history of the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry in 1949, looking at the way fandom was evolving, baseball was evolving, cultural awareness was evolving. It's a fantastic book by itself, but I think on its own it would be a little problematically parochial by modern standards, since it evokes a nostalgia for a particular kind of white middle class East Coast coming of age experience. However, it's paired beautifully with Halberstam's October 1964, an elegy for the end of the Yankee dynasty that doubles as a social history looking at how NYC life had changed in the intervening decade and a half, so that nostalgia has a more hard-headed, realistic companion. Just magical books about the relationship between baseball and a city.
-Peter Golenbock's Bums, an impeccably detailed if totally subjective and wonderfully massive oral history of the Brooklyn Dodgers, just jam packed with lovely stories about fans.
-John Helyar's Lords of the Realm, the best baseball business book I've ever read, by the author of Barbarians at the Gate, perhaps the best business narrative I've ever read. A sobering look at the financial relationships between players, owners, and the commissioner's office.
-Jim Bouton's Ball Four, the ultimate player's memoir, though I have other lesser known favorite player memoirs, like Bill Lee's The Wrong Stuff.
-Tim Carver's Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans, so utterly brilliant at dissecting the technical details of game management. Not at all at odds with sabermetrics, though I imagine Michael Lewis might see it as such, because Carver is so good at talking about unmeasurables and Michael Lewis is an idiot.
-W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, the inspiration for Field of Dreams, but it's much, much better and much, much weirder than the movie.