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No description yet...popular baseball books (showing 1-50 of 1,084)
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Paperback)
by Michael Lewis (shelved 92 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.21 — 5,026 ratings — published 2003
my rating:
Ball Four (Paperback)
by Jim Bouton (shelved 57 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.05 — 778 ratings — published 1971
my rating:
Summer of '49 (P.S.)
by David Halberstam (shelved 32 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.05 — 558 ratings — published 1989
my rating:
Shoeless Joe (Hardcover)
by W.P. Kinsella (shelved 30 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.92 — 962 ratings — published 1982
my rating:
Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History (Hardcover)
by Cait Murphy (shelved 29 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.79 — 199 ratings — published 2007
my rating:
Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager (Paperback)
by H.G. Bissinger (shelved 28 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.87 — 543 ratings — published 2005
my rating:
The Yankee Years (Hardcover)
by Joe Torre (shelved 25 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.62 — 674 ratings — published 2009
my rating:
Fantasyland: A Sportswriter's Obsessive Bid to Win the World's Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball (Paperback)
by Sam Walker (shelved 25 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.85 — 391 ratings — published 2006
my rating:
The Boys of Summer (Paperback)
by Roger Kahn (shelved 24 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.12 — 504 ratings — published 1972
my rating:
The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship (Paperback)
by David Halberstam (shelved 23 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.86 — 561 ratings — published 2003
my rating:
The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (Paperback)
by Bill James (shelved 22 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.57 — 262 ratings — published 2001
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Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (Paperback)
by George F. Will (shelved 22 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.84 — 256 ratings — published 1990
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Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (Paperback)
by Eliot Asinof (shelved 22 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.94 — 326 ratings — published 1963
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The Glory of Their Times : The Story of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It (Paperback)
by Lawrence S. Ritter (shelved 20 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.52 — 182 ratings — published 1971
my rating:
Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season (Paperback)
by Stewart O'Nan (shelved 20 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.66 — 632 ratings — published 2004
my rating:
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong (Paperback)
by The Baseball Prospectus Team of Experts (shelved 18 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.11 — 218 ratings — published 2007
my rating:
October 1964 (Paperback)
by David Halberstam (shelved 17 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.98 — 320 ratings — published 1994
my rating:
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero (Hardcover)
by David Maraniss (Goodreads author) (shelved 17 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.99 — 326 ratings — published 2006
my rating:
The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America (Hardcover)
by Joe Posnanski (Goodreads author) (shelved 16 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.36 — 208 ratings — published 2007
my rating:
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy (Paperback)
by Jane Leavy (shelved 16 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.92 — 284 ratings — published 2002
my rating:
The Natural (Paperback)
by Bernard Malamud (shelved 16 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.58 — 1,283 ratings — published 1952
my rating:
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks (Paperback)
by Zack Hample (shelved 15 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.68 — 278 ratings — published 2007
my rating:
Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame (Paperback)
by Bill James (shelved 15 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.01 — 103 ratings — published 1995
my rating:
Baseball: An Illustrated History (Paperback)
by Geoffrey C. Ward (shelved 15 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.42 — 82 ratings — published 1994
my rating:
The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball (Paperback)
by Frank Deford (shelved 14 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.70 — 65 ratings — published 2005
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Wait Till Next Year (Paperback)
by Doris Kearns Goodwin (shelved 14 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.96 — 873 ratings — published 1997
my rating:
Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top (Hardcover)
by Seth Mnookin (shelved 13 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.82 — 206 ratings — published 2006
my rating:
Baseball Between the Numbers (Hardcover)
by Steve Goldman (shelved 13 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.09 — 92 ratings — published 2006
my rating:
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy: A Novel (Paperback)
by W.P. Kinsella (shelved 13 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.75 — 283 ratings — published 1986
my rating:
The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches (Paperback)
by Bill James (shelved 12 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.72 — 99 ratings — published 2004
my rating:
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig (Paperback)
by Jonathan Eig (Goodreads author) (shelved 12 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.12 — 209 ratings — published 2005
my rating:
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (Hardcover)
by Nicholas Dawidoff (shelved 12 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.47 — 175 ratings — published 1994
my rating:
The Bad Guys Won! (Paperback)
by Jeff Pearlman (shelved 12 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.90 — 395 ratings — published 2004
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The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (Hardcover)
by Leigh Montville (shelved 12 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.75 — 126 ratings — published 2006
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Summerland (Hardcover)
by Michael Chabon (shelved 11 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.44 — 3,075 ratings — published 2002
my rating:
The Cheater's Guide to Baseball (Paperback)
by Derek Zumsteg (shelved 11 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.45 — 73 ratings — published 2007
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The Brothers K (Paperback)
by David James Duncan (shelved 10 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.48 — 3,741 ratings — published 1996
my rating:
Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders: A Complete Guide to the Worst Decisions and Stupidest Moments in Baseball History (Paperback)
by Rob Neyer (shelved 10 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.84 — 55 ratings — published 2006
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Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game (Modern Library Chronicles)
by George Vecsey (shelved 10 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.89 — 52 ratings — published 2006
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The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics (Paperback)
by Alan Schwarz (Goodreads author) (shelved 10 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.78 — 107 ratings — published 2004
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Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball (Paperback)
by Bob Costas (shelved 10 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.53 — 119 ratings — published 2000
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As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires (Hardcover)
by Bruce Weber (shelved 9 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.67 — 232 ratings — published 2009
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Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City (Paperback)
by Jonathan Mahler (shelved 9 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.92 — 620 ratings — published 2005
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Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups : A Complete Guide to the Best, Worst, and Most Memorable Players to Ever Grace the Major Leagues (Paperback)
by Rob Neyer (shelved 9 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.92 — 77 ratings — published 2003
my rating:
Nine Innings (Paperback)
by Daniel Okrent (shelved 9 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.98 — 67 ratings — published 1985
my rating:
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (Paperback)
by Robert Coover (shelved 9 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.96 — 317 ratings — published 1970
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Cobb: A Biography (Paperback)
by Al Stump (shelved 9 times as baseball)
avg rating 4.21 — 154 ratings — published 1996
my rating:
Babe: The Legend Comes to Life (Paperback)
by Robert W. Creamer (shelved 9 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.77 — 84 ratings — published 1974
my rating:
The Great American Novel. (Paperback)
by Philip Roth (shelved 9 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.63 — 475 ratings — published 1973
my rating:
Satchel (Hardcover)
by Larry Tye (shelved 8 times as baseball)
avg rating 3.90 — 154 ratings — published 2009
my rating:
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More quotes...
""Vowels were something else. He didn't like them, and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you knew pretty much where they stood, but you could never trust a vowel. To the old pitcher, they were like his own best knuckle ball come back to haunt him. In, out, up, down - not even the pitcher, much much less the batter, knew which way it would break. He kept swinging and missing.""
— Jerry Spinelli
— Jerry Spinelli
"Sometimes a strikeout means that the slugger’s girlfriend just ran off with the UPS driver. Sometimes a muffed ground ball means that the shortstop’s baby daughter has a pain in her head that won’t go away. And handicapping is for amateur golfers, not ballplayers. Pitchers don’t ease off on the cleanup hitter because of the lumps just discovered in his wife’s breast. Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives were at stake.
Perhaps they are. I cherish a theory I once heard propounded by G.Q. Durham that professional baseball is inherently antiwar. The most overlooked cause of war, his theory runs, is that it’s so damned interesting. It takes hard effort, skill, love and a little luck to make times of peace consistently interesting. About all it takes to make war interesting is a life. The appeal of trying to kill others without being killed yourself, according to Gale, is that it brings suspense, terror, honor, disgrace, rage, tragedy, treachery and occasionally even heroism within range of guys who, in times of peace, might lead lives of unmitigated blandness. But baseball, he says, is one activity that is able to generate suspense and excitement on a national scale, just like war. And baseball can only be played in peace. Hence G.Q.’s thesis that pro ball-players—little as some of them may want to hear it—are basically just a bunch of unusually well-coordinated guys working hard and artfully to prevent wars, by making peace more interesting."
— David James Duncan
Perhaps they are. I cherish a theory I once heard propounded by G.Q. Durham that professional baseball is inherently antiwar. The most overlooked cause of war, his theory runs, is that it’s so damned interesting. It takes hard effort, skill, love and a little luck to make times of peace consistently interesting. About all it takes to make war interesting is a life. The appeal of trying to kill others without being killed yourself, according to Gale, is that it brings suspense, terror, honor, disgrace, rage, tragedy, treachery and occasionally even heroism within range of guys who, in times of peace, might lead lives of unmitigated blandness. But baseball, he says, is one activity that is able to generate suspense and excitement on a national scale, just like war. And baseball can only be played in peace. Hence G.Q.’s thesis that pro ball-players—little as some of them may want to hear it—are basically just a bunch of unusually well-coordinated guys working hard and artfully to prevent wars, by making peace more interesting."
— David James Duncan
