Not because he owed it to the sport, but because he assumed that the baseball part of him was the best part, the piece he’d fight longest to hold.” His point, ambiguous as it may have been, was that, as long as he could function, the game would get his best. One big-leaguer, known for his drinking as well as his fear that the bottle might be mastering him, once told me, defiantly and proudly, that in his whole career he had ‘never had one drink from the time I woke up until the game was over.’ Of course, sometimes this future Hall of Famer didn’t wake up until the afternoon. This one, his first, paints a picture of the game in the early-’80s: “In part, our attachment to the game stems from a persistent feeling that major-leaguers tend to give the best of themselves to the game, even at peril to other parts of their lives. But in the ’80s, Boswell was in their class, as you’ll see in the four kick-ass anthologies of his baseball writing. Sometimes, it seems that longtime Washington Post writer Thomas Boswell gets lost somewhere between Bill James and Roger Angell. We’d sit down and talk about everything under the sun-all day long.” I had listened to their music on 78s and here was Larry casually introducing me to them. He introduced me to Sarah Vaughn, Miles Davis, Count Basie, and Billie Holiday. When I first went to Washington D.C., he introduced me to Adam Clayton Powell.
Larry would say we’re going to some barbershop in Cleveland or restaurant in Chicago or some friend’s apartment in Detroit. He knew people by name from everywhere from Kansas City to Washington D.C. Larry made sure he went out into his community and spoke to people.
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He taught me everything I know from how to dress and mix colors to how to become part of the community. Here’s pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant talking about Larry Doby, the first Black man to play in the American League: “The most I ever learned about the game was from him. This volume has excellent material on the first era of Black and Latinx major leaguers such as Monte Irvin, Don Newcombe, Vic Power, and Minnie Minoso. This is a stellar oral history edited by Danny Peary, who had a hand in a bunch of good baseball books, especially Cult Baseball Players. Those titles appear here, of course, along with our pick of 100 indispensable books no baseball fan should be without. On any self-respecting list, you’ll find The Glory of Their Times, The Summer Game, Eight Men Out, The Natural, Veeck as in Wreck, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?, Ball Four, The Boys of Summer, The Lords of the Realm, and Moneyball.
There are, of course, inner-circle Hall of Fame baseball books.
this passion for language and the telling detail is what makes baseball the writer’s game.” Ballplayers are tale tellers who have polished their malarky and winnowed their wisdom. It flows through the game, an invigorating system of anecdotes. The sport is catnip for writers: a game of contemplation and strategy that lends itself beautifully to numbers and analysis as well as poetry.Īs longtime Washington Post writer Tom Boswell once wrote, “Conversation is the blood of baseball. “We do this every day.” Through baseball books, we’ve come to understand the game and its history. “This ain’t a football game,” manager Earl Weaver once said. There are more good books written about baseball than any other American team sport-and that’s not just because baseball has been around the longest.