Don Amore from the Hartford Courant published this piece, pursuant to all the hubbub about the release yesterday of the Rodriguez biography. I have absolutely no quibble with his selection of Ball Four as his pick for the Babe Ruth/Hank Aaron/Cy Young of baseball books. But when he includes Spakry Lyle’s The Bronx Zoo among the tops … well then we’re gonna fight.
Other baseball books have been great. If you’ve never read Sparky Lyle’s “The Bronx Zoo,” you haven’t earned your master’s from Yankees University. Leo Durocher‘s “Nice Guys Finish Last” will teach you more baseball than a year of “Baseball Tonight.” And Richard Ben Cramer’s biography of Joe DiMaggio is impossible to put down, as is Robert Creamer’s bio of The Babe. These are just a few of my all-time faves.
Maybe he meant Lyle’s is among the best of the Yankee books? But even then, there has to be better. Credit Bouton with making it “acceptable” for players to come out with their own tell-all/tell-some accounts.
is available on Amazon.com,
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