From The Seattle Times — based in the city which will host the 2023 midsummer classic– this list of “Great baseball movies and books in honor of MLB All-Star Week” featuring the usual suspects, at lest when it comes to films, with the possible exception of Sugar and Damn Yankees (kids, ask your grandparents. I wonder if even they know that the movie was inspired by the 1954 novel, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, by Douglas Wallop?).
The books are a bit more eclectic and are solely novels, which is both the easy way out, relieving the writer from picking from a slew of great non-fiction, and more difficult, as good fiction is in the eye of the reader. Aside from Shoeless Joe — the basis of Field of Dreams, which is included in the movie portion — you’d have to be a pretty hardcore fan to be familiar with the other titles, the most recent of which was published in 2020 and the oldest, removing Shoeless Joe (1982), were released in 1992.
There actually haven’t been that many books about the Game itself. Most notably, there was The Midsummer Classic: The Complete History of Baseball’s All-Star Game, which is obviously not complete since it came out in 2001.
Other ASG themed titles include:
- The Day All the Stars Came Out: Major League Baseball’s First All-Star Game, 1933, by Lew Freedman(2010)
- 1970s All-Star Baseball: A History of the Decade’s All-Star Games, by Joe Gersbeck (2017)
- Baseball’s All-Star Game: A Game-By-Game Guide, by Jeff Lenburg (1986)
is available on Amazon.com,
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