* New titles from UNP

November 24, 2009

While many people look forward to the holiday catalogs that have already been stuffing mailboxes, or the seed catalogs that start arriving shortly after the new year, I look forward to the book catalogs that come every few months.

The latest from the University of Nebraska Press contains the regular inclusion of baseball titles that should be sure to follow the publisher’s suit of strong, well-researched products.

They include:

  • Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball, by Mark Armour. Cronin was one of those baseball lifers, beginning his career as a player before becoming a team executive and finally president of the American League. I may be wrong, but I can’t immediately recall another major bio on him in recent years, although Robert Gorman published a book in 2007 through Baldwin Books, which, if I’m not mistaken, is a self-publishing outfit. Cronin, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame,  spanned several generations of ballplayers, so I’m quite interested in seeing how he’s portrayed. (Due in April.)
  • 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York, by Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg. Yet another in a seemingly endless universe of New York-centric baseball books. I’m always fascinated with the huge popularity of baseball during the years before other entertainments — TV, talking movies, football — began pulling fans away. (April, although this one might be better suited for an October release, a la The First Fall Classic, The Machine, and Game Six, which all did well around World Series time this year.)
  • Final Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1972-2008, Dean Sullivan. If you haven’t read the first three in this series, do so. Sullivan goes through the arduous process of picking through all the highlights of the eras to find the most interesting, not just in terms of the sports stories, but in pop culture and even American history. The editor includes not just portraits of players and events, but documents (and there are thousands of them floating along behind the scenes) that are just as important as box scores. Not quite a scrapbook, not quite a straight narrative, but always entertaining. (June)
  • UNP is also publishing what basically amounts to two reprints: On a Clear Day They Could see Seventh Place: Baseball’s Worst Teams, by George Robinson and Charles Salzbeger, and The Imperfect Diamond: A History of Baseball’s Labor Wars, by Lee Lowenfish. Both feature new introductions, and the latter a new epilogue. Imperfect should include more, in my opinion, since it was first published more than 25 years ago. There’s so much more to consider that such a book deserves more than a quick overview in a postscript.
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