* Baseball book roundup: Sacramento Bee

This overview of lots of new titles by Bruce Dancis leads off with books about the scandals of the game, new and old, and includes:

Facing Clemens: Hitters on Confronting Baseball’s Most Intimidating Pitcher
Asterisk: Home Runs, Steroids, and the Rush to Judgment
Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle To Save Baseball (surprisingly not getting first billing or even stand-alone treatment)
The Dark Side of the Diamond

Some oral histories:

The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of ’78
We Would Have Played for Nothing
Tim McCarver’s Diamond Gems
Change Up

Of which the writer notes:

…there have always been limitations to oral histories because people, ballplayers included, don’t always remember events as they actually were. And as they get older, ballplayers have a tendency to embellish their stories.

Which is his way of introducing, Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, The Lies, and Everything Else.

Biographies include:

Spoke: A Biography of Tris Speaker
Yogi: The Life & Times of an American Original
Dice K
The 33-Year-Old Rookie (Chris Coste)
Living on the Black (Feinstein’s examination of Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine)
Far From Home: Latino Baseball Players in America
Venezuelan Bust, Baseball Boom
Gold on the Diamond: Sacramento’s Great Baseball Players, 1986-1976
Heroes of the Negro Leagues

And with the closing of Yankee Stadium:

The House That Ruth Built
Yankee Stadium
Memories of Yankee Stadium

To be fair to Red Sox Nation:

“Faithful to Fenway: Believing in Boston, Baseball, and America’s Most Beloved Ballpark
Dynasty: The Inside Story of How the Red Sox Became a Baseball Powerhouse

And some odds and ends: