* Suggested Reading, preface: Sean Horgan

Posted the second list before the first, so here it is:

Ball Four (Jim Bouton, 1970) | This book changed everything about how we cover and view sports and the people who play them. It also almost got me and my friend Prisby thrown out of sophomore English because we kept reading passages out loud to each other and howling like banshees.

Boys of Summer (Roger Kahn, 1971) | Kahn’s wonderful look at the Brooklyn Dodgers of the early 1950s, in what now feels like the last days of baseball’s innocence, and the intrusion of the real world on players such as Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese and the rest of the Bums.

Babe: The Legend Comes to Life (Robert Creamer, 1974) | The definitive work on the Bambino.

Hoopla (Harry Stein, 1983) | A terrific novel about the Black Sox scandal, told in the alternating voices of White Sox third baseman Buck Weaver and the reporter who broke the story.

You Gotta Have Wa (Robert Whiting, 1989) | Still my favorite book about the inherent cultural differences between baseball in Japan and America.

Veracruz Blues (Mark Winegardner, 1996) | A marvelous novel that traces the history of the Mexican baseball leagues during the first half of the 20th Century.

Lords of the Realm (Jon Helyar, 1994) | Helyar’s examination of baseball at a pivotal moment in the game’s history, as the union and the owners battled to control the destiny of the game amid the generation of great wealth. Baseball’s owners do not come off well.

Eight Men Out (Eliot Asimov, 1963) | Still the best literary offering when it comes to the 1919 Black Sox scandal and the ensuing fallout for the players and the game.

The Grace of ShortstopsT, Robert Mayer, 1984) | The fictional story of Pee Wee Brunig, a fourth-grader who idolizes the 1947 Dodgers and how the lessons of learning to play the position of his hero Pee Wee Reese can be applied to life.

Only the Ball was White (Robert Peterson, 1970) | A fond and fascinating look at the Negro Leagues written long after their demise.

Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life (Richard Ben Cramer, 2000) | One of the greatest sports biographies written about one of baseball’s greatest players.

Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero (Leigh Montville, 2005) | Ditto. And Montville’s Babe Ruth biography is right there, too.

You Know Me, Al (Ring Lardner, 1914) | A tour de force told through the letters, and the fractured syntax, of bush league pitcher Jack Keefe to his friend Al. The missives are at once funny, uplifting, moving and wrenching, as much about life as baseball.

The Summer Game (Roger Angell, 1972) | Some of the finest essays and histories ever written on baseball by one of the game’s foremost literary voices.

Beatty of the Yankees (Tex Maule, 1963) | One of the first sports books I ever read, this is the second in Maul’s series of novels about young Yankee shortstop Jim Beatty.

Money Ball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Michael Lewis, 2003) | Another baseball book that, using the Oakland Athletics as an example, charted some of the changes afoot in the national pastime in terms of how players are evaluated and the disparity between how big-market and small-market teams construct their organizations.