Coming Down the Pike: New Baseball Books

Used to be around this time of year you could look forward to the baseball annuals from Street & Smith, Athlon, Lindy’s, and a host of other magazine publishers. Of course, back in the day there were many others put out by the likes of The Sporting News, Major League Baseball, Bill Mazeroski, with Baseball America and Baseball Digest putting out special issues to mark the beginning of the season. A few more ‘zines turned out to be one-hit wonders. Unfortunately, those days seem to be gone. It’s a combination of the demand for up-to-the-minute information (the stuff in magazines is outdated almost as quickly as it hits the stands. What good are predictions if free agents are still available and rosters aren’t set?) and the decline of print media. I still will pick them up for the nostalgia factor, if nothing else.

So herewith is my “annual,” a list of books coming out this year. The details are accurate as possible as of this posting but bear in mind release dates are subject to change and, indeed, some publishers might withdraw projects altogether.

For what it’s worth, I’ve asterisked the titles I find especially interesting, all due respect to the rest of the lot.

Also, apologies for the appearance of the table, which was cut and pasted from an Excel sheet without much additional formatting.

A few observations, and expounding on some of the “asterisks”:

• McFarland, which specializes in the relatively obscure player and/or topic, leads the field with 19 books. Triumph is next with 11 followed by University of Nebraska Press with six.
• The Yankees and their players once again have the most books with 13 titles about individual players or specific teams.
• No Crying in Baseball: If it’s anything like Ron Shelton’s The Church of Baseball, it will be a winner. It will not, however, be the same, since the author had no direct connection with the film project.
• Black Stats Matter: I’ve been interested in how to reconcile the lack of cohesive statistics in the Negro Leagues with their fitting into the Major League record books.
• The Last Miracle: For some inexplicable reason, I was an Ed Kranepool fan very early on. Comparable to Charlie Brown’s admiration for Joe Shlabotnik.
• Why We Love Baseball: Interested to see how Posnanski follows up his excellent Baseball 100.
• Mallparks: Because fascinated by studies of consumerism.
• The New Ball Game: Similar to the Posnanski situation, following Carleton’s book on The Shift.
• Banana Ball: Don’t they seem like a fun bunch? But we’ll see how they fare in their sophomore season.
• Sports Illustrated volume on the Mets because the Mets.
• Baseball’s Endangered Species: Scouts rarely get their due. They seem like folk heroes at this point, frontiersmen who roamed the country (and beyond) looking for new “vistas.” In fact, that’s just one book about the professions, in addition to Joe Cambria and Smart, Wrong, and Lucky.
• From the Front Row: I want to see how Loria — who virtually drove the Expos out of Montreal — accounts for his actions.
• Bronx Epitaph: Made famous by The Pride of the Yankees, and following Richard Sandomir’s book about the making of that film, but is it fair to say it really “defined” Gehrig?
• Ballists, Deadbeats and Muffins comes in with the highest MSRP at $110.
• All due respect: Do we really “need” books by or about John Gibbons; Bill Virdon; more in the If These Walls Could Talk series; more about baseball fathers and sons; more about Mantle and Ruth; and life lessons from Little League?
• Almost every year there seems to be a trend but can’t really find one for 2023. Last couple of years it was the always expanding series of statistics (launch angle, spin count, bat speed). Not a whole lot in the way of sabremetrics in this batch.
• Roy White was the “coach” for my team when I was at Yankees fantasy camp in 2009. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but for some reason — maybe because I was closer in age than most of my teammates — he seemed to talk with me on a more personal level. Want to hear his take on playing for some of those awful clubs in the mid 60s to 70s.
• My picks for best book art (although these might not be the final versions and not all images were available at the time of posting):

Tagged as: baseball books 2023