The Baseball Timeline

by Burt Solomon

With hundreds of illustrations, this comprehensive, thoroughly researched, and compulsively readable record of baseball's greatest moments and seasonal events is sure to stimulate the memories and fantasies of much of American-and serve as an invaluable reference and argument-settler. Baseball has never been chronicled they way this timeline works. It covers every great moment in baseball, along with the colorful people, events, quotations, turning points, scandals, comic moments, and nostalgia of the national sport. Unlike any other baseball book, The Baseball Timeline is a day-by-day, year-by-year account of what happened throughout the baseball world. Every significant event is chronicled with just the level of detail fans want. In addition to individual feats, entries include landmark pennant races, important trades, disputes (on and off the field), famous firsts and lasts, franchise shifts, the openings of new ball parks, and even details of the last game played at stadiums scheduled for demolition. Keep The Baseball Timeline by the TV; let it stand as a home reference that provides nostalgic memories, "the last word" in disputes, or the one place to ensure that you know what really happened. It is a baseball fan's paradise for sidelights, trivia, nostalgia, color, and "I never knew that!" information. Lively text invites readers in for an exciting tour of the past beginning with its possible origins as an Native American game and continuing on through the first season of the new millennium.

Genres: Sports, Reference, Baseball, Nonfiction

1216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Burt Solomon is the author of The Baseball Timeline, which headed USA Today's list of the best sports books of the 20th Century. He also was a senior writer on The American Film Institute Desk Reference. He is the author of the highly-regarded novella, The Highest Paid Pro, about the early days of professional basketball, published by Mississippi Review. His fiction also appeared in Confrontation, he was a contributor to Chronicle of America and Chronicle of the Year 1989 and was an editorial consultant on Michio Kaku's acclaimed Hyperspace He also worked for many years as a ghostwriter.

(from back cover of his book, Shadow)

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

UPDATE: I recently pulled out all my baseball books and put them on the coffee table in time for baseball season. Late one night as I was sleeping, I slowly awoke up to a weird light coming from the den. I got up and the entire top half of the room was fogged in. I laid on the sofa and watched the fog swirling, then woke up the next morning on the sofa. No dream: Dad had visited. Yes, those who have passed do visit. This is a book that will be with me for the rest of my life.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I gave this book to my father a number of years ago. He passed in December of 2015. But we had spent a lot of time reading to each other from this book, he had once been a little league baseball coach, and we loved going to any baseball game: it was a chance to bond, to enjoy the outdoors. And now I'm sure he's visiting as many training games as possible so I think I'll go to one this weekend and enjoy it with him. This book itself is a beauty. It's not the kind of book one would read straight through, but it is exactly the kind of book which will sit on my library shelves here at home for the rest of my life. So, thanks DK for giving me the perfect gift to give my father: a book we enjoyed together for years and will continue to do so in the future.

[Bap · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is not the baseball encyclepedia containing stats on every signle at bat or pitch thrown but it does contain a year by year review of baseball, while putting it all into its historical context.Take 1950, the year I was born. North Korea invaded South Korea, I was a war baby. Joseph Stalin dies and Aljer Hiss was convicted of perjury. The red scare at home gathers steam. Alex Pompez, chief Caribbean scout for the Giants recommends the team sign 23 year old right handed pitching prospect, Fidel Castro. The Philadelphia Phillies, the Whiz kids, win the NL pennant. The Yankess beat them in the world series. On my birthday,Whitey Ford loses for the first time, breaking his nine game winning streak. Jim Konstantly, a Phillynreliever, is the National League MVP. Yankee Phil Rizzuto, the Scooter, garners this honor for the American league.

Good stuff.

[Brent Soderstrum · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the concept of the book which is an in depth look at each year baseball has been in existence all the way from the trades in the off-season to the crowning of the new World Series champion. However this book was missing years 1915-1919, had errors that weren't caught in editing and painstakingly went through almost every homerun from McGwire and Sosa in 1998-2000. Long enjoyable book to meander through for baseball fans. Just needs to be cleaned up.