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The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball: An All-Star Lineup Celebrates America's National Pastime
Batters up! Here are the heavy hitters of baseball writing and reporting, the raconteurs and the players of America’s favorite game, all in one big, entertaining volume that no fan can do without.
The featured luminaries include Zane Grey, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyan, W.P. Kinsella, Red Smith, Tim McCarver, Pete Rose, and George Will, and they all weigh in with wit and an obvious love of the sport. Many offer a fascinating glimpse into baseball’s history, such as Walt Whitman, who reports on a rugged game played even before the Civil War. Russell Baker provides lessons on the art of firing, “learned at the knee of Mr. Steinbrenner.” An excerpt from Jim Bouton’s groundbreaking classic Ball Four examines the sport’s unrelenting power over “You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” With these stories and essays, baseball buffs will relive important moments, such as Candy Cummings’ perfecting the first curve ball, baseball’s drawing the color line in 1887, and Bob Carroll’s uncovering Nate Colbert’s hidden RBI record in 1972.
The featured luminaries include Zane Grey, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyan, W.P. Kinsella, Red Smith, Tim McCarver, Pete Rose, and George Will, and they all weigh in with wit and an obvious love of the sport. Many offer a fascinating glimpse into baseball’s history, such as Walt Whitman, who reports on a rugged game played even before the Civil War. Russell Baker provides lessons on the art of firing, “learned at the knee of Mr. Steinbrenner.” An excerpt from Jim Bouton’s groundbreaking classic Ball Four examines the sport’s unrelenting power over “You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” With these stories and essays, baseball buffs will relive important moments, such as Candy Cummings’ perfecting the first curve ball, baseball’s drawing the color line in 1887, and Bob Carroll’s uncovering Nate Colbert’s hidden RBI record in 1972.
- GenresBaseballSportsNonfiction
848 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2004
About the author
John Thorn
116 books25 followersJohn Thorn has been the official historian for Major League Baseball since 2011.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 2, 2018
An exhaustive book (848 pages), but so many good/great stories in here. Enjoyable to read sporadically (trust me, I read it over 11 months)
April 24, 2024
Outstanding set of writings on America's greatest game.
June 26, 2007
I'm not reading this so much because I like baseball, but because I don't want to say that I was defeated by anything called the "Armchair Book of [subject]". As joyless as it is compulsive!
You know what? I'm going to stop pretending I'm reading this. One of those unwieldy impulse-buy type books of the kind you see on sale at Costco, then buy as a gift for your baseball-loving relative because you have no idea what a chore it will be to actually heave the thing open and read it.
You know what? I'm going to stop pretending I'm reading this. One of those unwieldy impulse-buy type books of the kind you see on sale at Costco, then buy as a gift for your baseball-loving relative because you have no idea what a chore it will be to actually heave the thing open and read it.
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February 3, 2009796.3 Com
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews