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Greg Cleveland

Well-known member
Aug 9, 2008
4,893
265
Eau Claire, Wisconsin, United States
So, inspired by adding a few books on Mickey Mantle in [MENTION=1995]dano7[/MENTION] 's Mantle thread, I went about digging out my book collection. Many of us love a good read about our favorite sport. Some books and authors are legendary, others can be more regional or compilations instead of a story about one person. Sometimes the best stores are about the people, with baseball merely the setting, not the point.

I often pick up books with the intent to read it someday. I get most at my library's book sale. (Every 3-4 months) I try to get ones that people have donated, rather than ones that the library has decommissioned. Garage sales work too.

So I'll start off with a few favorites and will add here and there. I hope others add pics of their own, and give recommendations of their favorites too. 20180322_184546.jpg

I'll start with a Cardinals theme. Which means starting with Stan the Man, of course.

Here's a couple I picked up from the library sale.

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I liked this book on Whitey Herzog because of the great stories he tells. A pretty below average player, but became a great manager (like a few others I'm sure you can name!)

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Here's a local gem, published in the St. Louis area in 1976.

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That's just a start. Let's see what you have!
 

dano7

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
13,307
3,807
Roanoke, VA
Very nice! We Saw Stars looks interesting! I have some I will post, both of general baseball and other player themed.
 

goobmcnasty

Active member
Apr 4, 2014
1,583
13
Matt Christopher baseball books!

Definitely not the greatest literary works of our time,
but they were the only thing I'd read in grade school
when it was time to do a book report.

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predatorkj

Active member
Aug 7, 2008
11,871
2
Don't have pics but I loved Ball Four(Bouton) and The Bronx is Burning. I really liked the Bronx is Burning because it gives you a historical take on things in New York at that time from the mayoral race to the Son of Sam stuff to the blackout etc. Really went beyond baseball which was cool to me. Made me feel like I was there and seeing and hearing things most New Yorker's experienced at that time. I also liked The Bad Guys Won about the 86 Mets.


Other mentions not related to BB are The Punch written by Feinstein (I believe) and a pretty good read about Rudy T and the Kermit Washington fight(as a lifelong Houston fan I never even knew that happened...seriously...nobody ever talks about it). Also, the Sports Gene. Very broken down look at what might be facilitating factors that determine athleticism. Also provides some historical perspective.
 

JVHaste

Well-known member
Jun 22, 2015
4,751
270
Vancouver WA
To anyone wanting to start a vintage book collection, https://www.biblio.com/ is a great site I've had success with. Just sort by year+keyword+photo..... and refresh if your search says Zero, because sometimes it bugs and there really are books for your search.
 

deaconblues63

Well-known member
Oct 25, 2012
2,645
1,491
I’ve got a couple of hundred baseball books, both fiction and nonfiction.

Here are three of my favorites. They are all first editions.

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Sent from my iPhone using Freedom Card Board
 
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MrMet

Well-known member
Apr 6, 2010
13,556
612
The Poconos
Let’s see...

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That shelf is all my autographed books, so that’s a mix but a bunch of baseball there...Before the Glory is one my friend wrote, he’s the guy who runs the event i volunteer at every year

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That shelf is the majority of my Mets books

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That shelf is mostly miscellaneous baseball.

Not pictured are the Dirk Hayhurst books (although one might be on the autographed shelf) and they are great reads!


Sent from my iPhone using Freedom Card Board
 

smapdi

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
4,397
221
I've pared down my whole library considerably since getting married. I used to have about 2000 books, now down to under 500, more going to Half-price soon. Just looking around, I found I didn't need them as "trophies" to store on shelves anymore, and won't reread them. Or if I ever do, I can just buy a new copy. I never had many baseball books, actually. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy and a collection of Kinsella shorts were in there. But I mainly had non-fiction, and mostly from childhood. Dan Schlossberg's Baseball Almanac was good for hours of randomly rereading a few pages at a time. Furman Bisher's Strange But True Baseball Stories. Bill James's New Historical Abstract and Win Shares. A 1997 copy of Total Baseball the size of an illuminated Lutheran Bible. A 1996 SCG price guide that was extremely frustrating because there was no year-by-year index, so if you wanted to look up, say, every Moe Berg card, there was no easy way to locate all sets from the 30s.
 

jay1065

New member
Aug 7, 2008
2,220
0
Lowell, MA
A few of my favorites:

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WizardofOz1982

Well-known member
Sep 30, 2017
1,733
1,498
Oklahoma
A few of my favorites:

51QlN3YomPL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
51Y40F1ANPL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

51CcNZU2sVL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
7662052.jpg

The Soul of Baseball is such a great read. Even though it is a Cardinals history I couldn't get into The Summer of Beer and Whiskey. I'll likely try to read it again sometime.

Have you read I Was Right On Time by Buck O'Neil and David Conrads?
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