‘Tis the season for end-of-the-year lists

December 23, 2011 · 1 comment

James Baily published his list of top ten baseball books on Baseball America. His choices include, in order:

While this is a fine list, with every title a gem, I might have substituted either George Vecsey’s Stan Musial: An American Life or Kostya Kennedy’s 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports, or just extended the list; 10 seems like a nice neat number, but arbitrary. So in addition to the aforementioned Musial and DiMaggio books, I would put in my two cents for

There, 15. Still nice and “neat”; still arbitrary.

It’s interesting to note the disparity in rankings. The Art of Fielding is amazingly high, overall, but then you have Green’s spiritual guidebook which comes in at about 66,000.

 

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1 Mark Ahrens December 23, 2011 at 11:24 am

I have gotten to read about half of the 15 you list above.  Conlon’s picture books should adorn any fan’s coffeee table.  I really enjoyed Green’s book as it showed a side of baseball players we don’t often get to see.   A shout out to Jonah Keri for his moneyball-like approach to Tampa Bay Rays…However, my favorite was 33rd inning as I just happened to see it at the Pawtucket’s McCoy stadium.  I thought 33rd was a brilliant piece of story telling. 

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