New Respect for Baseball Titles

Ever since academicians and historians such as Harold Seymour, David Q. Voigt, and Jules Tygiel began to make "serious" examinations of the national pastime, baseball has received a newfound respect from a new generation of readers. Heretofore, sports books were relegated almost exclusively to juvenile literature with heroes like Babe Ruth or Dizzy Dean overcoming adversity to attain stardom. Through the writings of Seymour and company, we see now that baseball is much more than just an athletic endeavor. It is a microcosm of life, its impact spanning numerous disciplines. Sociology, economics, music, and the media are but a few of the subcategories that baseball touches.

Despite baseball's image problems over the past few years, there is no shortage of love when it comes to writing about the game. While larger publishing houses can afford to concentrate on the "flavor of the month," whether that entails the most recent World Series winner or last season's hottest ballplayers, fans can always count on the small and university presses to cover a wider range of topics (read, "less popular"), from history to poetry, economic analyses to sociological surveys, autobiographies of long-forgotten heroes to bios of players whom some fans might never even have heard of. Smaller presses generally take more chances, for which fanciers of baseball lit can be most grateful.

Several small presses specialize in baseball titles. McFarland and Company Publishers, Inc., for example, is a bastion of eclectic topics, covering statistical analysis; academic (as opposed to hagiographic) biographies; team histories; the business of baseball; studies of the Negro League and its players; and other books that defy classification. Their authors are generally experts in their field; many belong to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). One of their more unusual titles is The Baseball Necrology: The Post-Baseball Lives and Deaths of over 7,600 Major League Players and Others (0-7864-1539-8), by Bill Lee (the historical researcher, not the Red Sox pitcher). Another "new" title, Busting 'Em and Other Big League Stories (0-786415-99-1), is actually a reprint of a collection of stories credited to Ty Cobb but in reality ghostwritten by John N. Wheeler. It is a charming look at the writing styles of almost a century ago and you can't find a better baseball expert than the Georgia Peach, who was among the first players voted into the Hall of Fame.

Writers from non-sport disciplines demonstrate the many ways that baseball touches the rest of society. For example, Hal Erickson, an author specializing in television and movies, recently released the second edition of The Baseball Filmography: 1915 through 2001 (0-786412-72-0), an exhaustive examination and critic of the cinema as it pertains to the sport. Similarly, Reel Baseball: Essays and Interviews on the National Pastime, Hollywood and American Culture (edited by Stephen C. Wood and J. David Pincus, 0-78621-38-9) juxtaposes these two of our favorite entertainments.

Keeping with this theme for a moment, one cannot forget the impact of the movie version of W.P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe, which helped move baseball movies, previously generally relegated to B status, into mainstream cinema. Is This Heaven: The Magic of The Field of Dreams, by Brett H. Mandel (Diamond Communications, 1-888698-41-1), examines how this sentimental piece has affected a nation of baby boomers wishing to reconnect to long-forgotten simple pleasures. As the name might imply, Diamond Communications has been the source of numerous baseball titles since its inception in 1982.

Shoeless Joe Jackson, like Cobb one of the greatest players in the game's long history, was banned from baseball for his complicity in the attempt to fix the 1919 World Series. This subject has become something of a cottage industry. Saying It's So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal, by Daniel A. Nathan (University of Illinois Press, 0-252027-65-5), is the latest study of a monumental event that nearly caused the collapse of baseball at the height of its popularity following World War I. "The Black Sox scandal has remained firmly entrenched in American memory and imaginations," writes Nathan, an assistant professor in American Studies at Skidmore College, who goes on to demonstrate how aspects of the fix have been a main theme in literature, film, politics, and journalism.

Another Midwest publisher, Southern Illinois University Press (SIUP), adds several new titles to its impressive Writing Baseball series, now in its sixth year. Bottom of the Ninth: Great Contemporary Baseball Short Stories, edited by John McNally (0-8093-2505-5) joins Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, edited by Brooke Horvath and Tim Wiles (0-8093-2440-7), in looking at the literary side of the game.

This year, in celebration of the centennial anniversary of the World Series, SIUP has reprinted the team histories of the original fall classic combatants: The Pittsburgh Pirates (0-8093-2492-X) and The Boston Red Sox (0-8093-2493-8), both written by the late Fred Lieb, one of the all-time great baseball writers. These are the latest in a project to reprint team profiles for the original sixteen major league teams. The series includes three old favorites by Frank Graham, covering the New York clubs: the Yankees, Giants, and Brooklyn Dodgers, which joins Lieb's The St. Louis Cardinals: The Story of a Great Baseball Team, originally released in 1944, and Warren Brown's 1946 book, The Chicago Cubs. All serve as refreshing reminder of how sports scribes covered the game in "the good old days."

Triumph Books, yet another publisher from the Midwest, also has a considerable list on baseball. Among the more unusual topics from this year's stable is Glove Affairs: The Romance, History, and Tradition of the Baseball Glove by Noah Liberman (1-572434-20-1). Anyone who's ever played the game, regardless of ability, knows that a baseball glove is one of the first pieces of sports equipment a child receives. It is carefully cultivated to become an extension of the owner. While bats may be communal property among kids on the sandlot, gloves are much more personal. Liberman writes about that special bond.

Another example of the willingness of small presses to take chances is The Little Red (Sox) Book: A Revisionist Red Sox History by former Boston pitcher (and perennial flake) Bill "Spaceman" Lee with Jim Prime (1-572435-27-5). Taking a page from the "alternative history" genre, Lee ponders "what if?" What if the Sox had not sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees? What if, instead of spending five years in the military, Ted Williams had successfully assassinated Adolph Hitler while the German chancellor attended a game? What if Jackie Robinson had been signed by the Red Sox in 1945, making them the pioneers in breaking the color line instead of the Dodgers? The Red Sox would have been the perennial champions and New York, without its mighty Yankees, would be a second-class city. Lee also pokes fun at the rote manner in which ballplayers and managers cliche their way through life ("We're giving it 110 percent!"). His wit and non sequitur ramblings remind one of Groucho Marx.

In fact, Boston was the last team to have a black player on their roster, adding Pumpsie Green to the big club in 1959, more than a decade after Robinson joined the Dodgers and helped lead them to pennant contention for several seasons. The Red Sox racist philosophy is the subject of Howard Bryant's excellent Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston (Routledge, 0-415927-79-X). The author, a journalist for several newspapers, grew up in Boston during the busing crisis of the 1970s and has written extensively on race and baseball.

The University of Nebraska Press also has a separate imprint for its baseball titles: Bison Books contains both original works and reprints of old favorites. One is just as likely to find a biography of a relatively unknown baseball lifer like Charlie Metro's Safe by a Mile, (with Tom Altherr, 0-8032-8281-8) as Extra Bases: Reflections on Jackie Robinson, Race, & Baseball History (0-8032-9447-6), by the aforementioned Jules Tygiel, a professor of history at San Francisco State University, who has written several books about the importance of Robinson's life both for baseball and America. Among Bison's recent classic reprints are The Era, 1947-1947: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World, by Roger Kahn, another legendary baseball writer (0-803278-05-5), and The Streak: Joe DiMaggio and the Summer of '41 (0-8032-9293-7), by Michael Seidel, a humanities professor at Columbia University. Both volumes take a rose-colored look at what many consider to be the game' golden age, when sportswriters concentrated about athletes' playing time and not jail time.

For the ladies feeling out of the loop when it comes to the finer points of the game, Gibbs-Smith, operating out of Layton, Utah, offers Lisa Martin's The Cool Chick's Guide to Baseball (1-58685-259-0). This handy guide includes an explanation of the often-confusing rules, strategies, positions, score keeping, and even where to sit, what to wear, and what to eat at the ballpark. It manages to explain the most fundamental points of the game without being condescending.

Martin knows that there's more to baseball than, well, baseball. So do the other writers mentioned herein who cover such a multitude of aspects of the sport, and the publishers wise and courageous enough to give them a voice.