I will be brief: A sampling of baseball e-books

Conducted my semi-regular scan of new titles. Submitted for your interest. It may seem unfair, but I do tend to judge e-books by their cover, especially when they are offered only in that format. It’s an indication of the time and effort the author/publisher puts into the project. Similarly, I’m basing my opinions strictly on the quality of the sample offered. Some are longer than others; I’m not sure who makes those decisions.

* Cellar Dwellers: The Worst Teams in Baseball History, by Jonathan Weeks (The Scarecrow Press, non-fiction; 216 “pages.” $39.15 vs. $40.80 hardcover ). The sample offers the first chapter covering the 1890 Pittsburgh Alleghenys, a team that won only 23 out of 136 games.Unfortunately, there’s no table of contents to get a sense of other teams that fall into this category.

Sample size: One chapter
Table of contents? No
Worth the price? Leaning towards no.

* Continuing on that “loser” theme, we have MISFITS! Baseball’s Worst Ever Team, originally published in 2001 by J. Thomas Hetrick (Pocol Press, non-fiction; 268 “pages.” $8.95 vs. $17.95 paperback). Hetrick, who has several baseball titles under his belt, limits his narrative to a daily recap of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

Sample size: Substantial and representative
Table of contents? Yes
Worth the price? Yes.

* The Call-Up 2012, by Baseball Prospectus. (Kindle only, $3.99. 180 “pages”). Offers updates on the season. Kind of reminds me of the years when Topps would put out a subset of cards at the end of the year for traded players and prospects that came up after the original run was issued.

Sample size: Four players; representative
Table of contents? Yes
Worth the price? Yes, if you really need this info in “book” form.

* The Bubble Gum Card War: The Great Bowman and Topps Sets from 1948 to 1955, by Dean Hanley. (Self-published; $9.99 v.s $9.99 paperback). Published by a memorabilia/card outfit, Bubble Gum offers a nice history of the industry as well as the first real “head-to-head” competition, decades before Score, Donruss, and Fleer came on the scene to challenge Topps. Footnotes mean the author wants to show off his research skills.

Sample size: Fairly generous
Table of contents? Yes
Worth the price? Yes, especially if you like the behind-the-scenes stuff.

* Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, the Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend, by Danny Peary and Tom Clavin. (NAL; 416 “pages”; $12.99 vs. $16.43 hardcover). The writing team of Peary and Clavin follow up their well-reviewed bio of Roger Maris with a long-overdue treatment on one of the underrated figures in the game.

Sample size: Preface plus two chapters
Table of contents? Yes
Worth the price? Yes.

* Home Team: New York Yankees, “a narrative book filled with vivid photographs of both current fan portraits and historic archived Yankee legends,” according to the info page on Amazon.com. (Kindle only, $7.99, no page count).

Sample size: Very small, basically just the foreword by sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, although judging by the few photos included, this looks like a well-produced publication.
Table of contents? No
Worth the price? Yes. Bonus: According to the publisher, a portion of the proceeds will go to the Major League Players Baseball Trust.