Baseball: a primer through books

From the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, as the Indians prepare for the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox, one writer’s opinion about the best books on the game.

I always find it interesting how faux fans crawl out of the woodwork at this time of year, especially when FOX broadcasts the World Series, stocking the crowd with stars of it own programs. Oh, look, there’s Kiefer Sutherland! And Brad Garrett, a life-long fan of The Cubbies (oh, well), and some non-familiar, obviously-non-fan who’s pulling for the “Arizona Rockettes.”

One of the pleasures of baseball is that it can be watched and analyzed in so many ways. It may help explain why no other game has inspired more books, and why an old joke says the first literary reference to baseball comes in the first words of the Bible: “In the big inning . . . ”

The more you know, the more enjoyable the game. Baseball books — a library of histories, biographies, memoirs, analyses, novels and how-to manuals — can help. Here are a few recommendations, geared to fans of novice, medium and grandstand-manager level

The list includes:

• Baseball for Dummies, by Joe Morgan
• Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample
• The Glory of Their Times, by Lawrence Ritter
• Baseball: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
• The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
• Three Nights in August, by Buzz Bissinger
• The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, by Bill James.
• Baseball Between the Numbers, by the Baseball Prospectus Team of Experts, edited by Jonah Keri