World Series reading

It’s an travel day today. Aren’t you glad they stared the game am hour early yesterday because of perilous weather? If not — and assuming the same length of four hours and four minutes — it would have ended after midnight. So I thought I’d save you some time and offering links to some of the more interesting and relevant books about the fall classic.

I will not be looking at the material that is usually put out by the winner’s local newspapers immediately upon completion of the Series or, for that matter, most of those titles that deal with one team in one year, including the anniversaries of such accomplishments, which are fairly popular. Similarly, the lists below do not consider the number of books ostensibly written by players and managers after their successful run, a flavor-of-the-month, if you will, from people who would otherwise never have been given a secnd thought when it came to telling their story. Lenny Dykstra’s Nails: The Inside Story of an Amazin’ Season comes immediately to mind. While he was certainly a spark plug for the ’86 Mets, he was just in his second year in the major leagues with all of 230 regular season games under his belt.

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The pomp and splendor of the Series lends itself to coffee table books, full of dramatic photos. This was especially true when the 100th Series was played, as well as the 100th anniversary, which is not the same thing thing since there were no World Championship battles in 1904 due to hissy fits between the leagues and in 1994 because of the players strike. Many of these large-format tomes included complete box scores and a a few even offer play-by-play. Included in that sub genre are

World Series: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Fall Classic by Josh Leventhal.
World Series: An Opinionated Chronicle, by Joseph Wallace.
100 Years of the World Series, by Eric Enders.
The World Series: Illustrated History 1903 to the Present, by by Donald Honig. “The Present” in this case was 1985. Needless to say, these books are outdated as soon as the next Series rolls around.
Sports Illustrated World Series.

Then there are the more “academic” volumes

Autumn Glory: Baseball’s First World Series, by Louis P. Masur
The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903, by Roger Abrams
Baseball’s Untold History: The World Series, by Michael Lynch.

Here are a few titles specifically about this year’s pennant winners

Wrigley Field’s Last World Series: The Wartime Chicago Cubs and the Pennant of 1945, by Charles Billington
When Chicago Ruled Baseball: The Cubs-White Sox World Series of 1906, by Bernard Weisberger
The Cubs Win the Pennant!: Charlie Grimm, the Billy Goat Curse, and the 1945 World Series Run, by John Skipper
Stick To The Finish: The Story of the 1920 Cleveland Indians, by Andrew Rotuno
A Summer to Remember: Bill Veeck, Lou Boudreau, Bob Feller, and the 1948 Cleveland Indians, by Lew Freedman
The Boys of Summer of 1948: The Golden Anniversary of the World Champion Cleveland Indians, by Russell Schneider

And finally, the sub-section that probably has more books than any other, the 1919 Black Sox Scandal in which members of the other Chicago team conspired (allegedly, since none of them were actually convicted) to throw the games against the Cincinnati Reds. Shoeless Joe Jackson gets the bulk of individual biographies because of the tragic nature of his non-role in the seminal series, which as Charles Funtain notes below, opened the door to the likes of Babe Ruth and the “modern game.” Eliot Asinoff’s book was the first and in some ways still the best. Sure each successive book may have more details, uncovered more secrets, but there’s something especially charming about his contribution. I may be wrong, and please correct me if so, but I’m guessing there might be more written about the Black Sox than any other specific event in baseball history. There have been lots of books about Jackie Robinson, but to my mind those are more about the totality of the man than the actual “event” of his debut.