Once in a while, I will get a communique from an author kindly suggesting his or her book be included in any update of 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. I get it. That’s how I felt when other tomes were selected for various honors the same year my baby was published. I got over that pretty quickly, considering the breadth and quality of the competition. (In fact, a number people, upon learning of 501, were actually surprised there were “so many” books about the national pastime. These were obviously not fans of the national pastime. Kind of the same reaction by some when discussing Jewish sports stars.)
Then I picked up 1,000 Books to Read Before Your Die: A Life-Changing List, by James Mustich. No illusions here. I never expected to see my work mentioned. But I was curious to see if there were any baseball titles out of those thousand selections.
Bingo! Not one, but two!
♦ A False Spring, by Pat Jordan. Mustich writes, “[H]e composed a memoir that is filled with the lore of the game, the heat of competition, the camaraderie of the locker room, nostalgia and regret, bewilderment at time’s unhittable slow curves…. Jordan composed one of the best-written, truest memoirs you’ll ever read — not just about baseball, but about growing up as well.”
♦ The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn, “a series of poignant and pleasurable encounters with middle-aged men battling, generally with grace and good humor, ‘the implacable enemy, time.'” This is all the more touching given the recent passing of Dodgers legend Don Newcombe.
You might argue over the omission of Jim Bouton’s Ball Four (selected by the New York Public Library as one of its “Books of the Century” in 1995) or any other of your favorites you might feel were slighted. But bear in mind that this collection features American and international authors such as Camus, Cervantes, Dickens, Hemingway, Shaw, Shakespeare, Pynchon, Tolkien, Woolf, Whitman, and Twain, to mention just a few. (Mustich does include Michael Lewis, but not for Moneyball.) The fact that baseball is in there at all is a nice feature.
And remember, just like everything featured in 501, it’s just one man’s opinion.
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