Baseball season is finally here! Check out these new books on America’s pastime. Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original by Mitchell Nathanson From the day he first stepped into the Yankee clubhouse, Jim Bouton (1939–2019) was the sports world’s deceptive revolutionary. Underneath the crew cut and behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks lurked a maverick …
We’ve waited and waited. Finally, this year, Edgar Martinez received his nomination to baseball’s Hall of Fame. His delightful autobiography follows the fascinating journey from his youth in Puerto Rico, where Edgar started his career with a broomstick for a bat, hitting rocks, bottle caps, even raindrops. Then follows a complicated story with ups and …
I couldn’t tell you who won last year’s World Series, because I don’t follow baseball. But this sports book has earned a sterling reputation as a classic that transcends the game. Author/knuckleball pitcher Jim Bouton has the humorist’s eye for telling, pithy detail, and the memoirist’s courage in sharing honest and sometimes unflattering anecdotes about himself …
At the end of July, Norton sales rep Dan Christiaens hosted Poetry Night at the Ballpark with the staff of Seattle’s Open Books, and, for some reason, me. Dan gave us all copies of Norton’s Baseball Haiku, too. The crew declaimed some memorized verse between innings, but mostly we just watched the game and had a …
I was helping move some shelves in the sports section not long ago when a little piece of history fluttered out from a crevice. In case it’s not clear from the photo, that’s a 56-year-old box seat ticket that let some lucky fan watch the Portland Beavers play in what was then known as Multnomah …
Summer is here and baseball is in full swing. The greatest game has the written rules of the umpires and the unwritten code of the players. Turbow’s book sheds light on the Code using hilarious anecdotes of players past and present; tracking the evolution of the Baseball’s Code to the modern era. This book had …
This anecdotal history of baseball is a gem. Musings—both personal and historical—are intertwined with snippets of Americana, dashes of history, and cultural observations by an urban anthropologist. Flip through the book and randomly read about pissing in the Wrigley Field troughs, Allan Dulles’ CIA coups, bubble gum and tobacco rituals, the politics of facial hair, …
“When I read this book I was not a baseball fan—didn’t understand the allure. But after reading this WWII-set novel, I finally undstood what it means to fans. A wonderful coming-of-age novel with dashes of the “Frankenstein” myth, Brittle Innings is a must for baseball fans (or not).” —Vlad, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, …
Say you own a small shop of some sort and you’re a baseball fan and your team’s game is on the radio and your star pitcher is throwing a perfect game through six innings and it’s an afternoon game so the shop is open. Small means you have no employees and you pride yourself on …
