Books to Read During Baseball Season

FICTION

1. The Catch by Alison Fairbrother : Twentysomething Ellie thought she was her father's favorite child; she was sure he would leave her his most prized possession, a baseball with which they played catch, and which sat on his desk, as a kind of inspiration: her poet father's most famous poem was called "The Catch." But when her father's will is read, his children, including from other marriages, each receive a meaningful object, except Ellie, who receives a glow-in-the-dark tie rack that she has never seen before.
2. Calico Joe by John Grisham: This story, based on the Cubs and Mets 1973 season follows the divergent paths of Joe Castle, a rookie hitter for the Chicago Cubs and Warren Tracey, a hard-throwing Mets pitcher.
3. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach : At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big-league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.
4. The Cactus League by Emily Nemens : Jason Goodyear is the star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions, stationed with the rest of his team in the punishingly hot Arizona desert for their annual spring training. Handsome, famous, and talented, Goodyear is nonetheless coming apart at the seams. And the coaches, writers, wives, girlfriends, petty criminals, and diehard fans following his every move are eager to find out why--as they hide secrets of their own.
5. Double Play by Robert Parker : In 1947 Jackie Robinson breaks baseball's color barrier—and changes the world. The event also changes the life of Robinson's bodyguard—and those changes can prove fatal.
6. Golden Arm by Carl Deuker : Lazarus "Laz" Weathers has always been shy, and his issue with stuttering when he speaks hasn't helped. Stuck in a Seattle trailer park, Laz finds baseball helps him escape from the world of poverty and drugs. When he gets an opportunity to pitch for the rich kids across town, he has a chance to get drafted by the major leagues. But playing for the other team means leaving behind his family, including Antonio, Laz's younger brother, who more and more, seems to be drawn to the dark world of the Jet City's drug ring. Now Laz will have to choose between being the star pitcher he always dreamed of becoming and the team player his family needs.
7. Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Peña : Sixteen-year-old Danny searches for his identity amidst the confusion of being half-Mexican and half-white while spending a summer with his cousin and new friends on the baseball fields and back alleys of San Diego County, California.

Nonfiction

1. Baseball As America by National Geographic : Baseball As America examines how the American landscape, our language, literature, entertainment, food, and summertime living all bear the mark of a 19th-century game that has become intertwined with our nation's values and aspirations. Baseball As America is the official companion volume to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum's unprecedented national traveling exhibition. Features more than 200 original and archival photographs that bring the game to life on its pages. Perfect for every baseball fan, indeed every American, Baseball As America is a comprehensive panorama of the game America has grown up with.
2. Baseball - ...The Perfect Game by Josh Leventhal: Red Stockings and Black Sox. Bums and Bosox. The Professor and the Spaceman. Cobb and Ruth. Matty and Satchel. The Man and Rapid Robert. Williams and Bonds. Say Hey and Sandy. Hammerin’ Hank and Slammin’ Sammy. From the heroic hits to the heart-breaking slumps, baseball inspires writers from all walks of life to reflect on the game and its place in our lives. Lavishly illustrated with photos and memorabilia, "Baseball . . . The Perfect Game" presents the greatest writings about the diamond’s greatest players, teams, and seasons.
3. Shut Out by Howard Bryant : With a new introduction by celebrated baseball writer Roger Kahn and a new afterword by the author, updating John Henry's first year of ownership after nearly six decades of the Yawkey dynasty, the legacy of the late Will McDonough, and the author's return to his native Boston after a seventeen-year absence, Shut Out has reopened the discussion of baseball, race, and Boston with a new candor.
4. The Dickson Baseball Dictionary by Paul Dickson : Hailed as “a staggering piece of scholarship” (Wall Street Journal) and “an indispensable guide to the language of baseball” (San Diego Union-Tribune), The Dickson Baseball Dictionary has become an invaluable resource for those who love the game. Drawing on dozens of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century periodicals, as well as contemporary sources, Dickson’s brilliant, illuminating definitions trace the earliest appearances of terms both well known and obscure. This edition includes more than 10,000 terms with 18,000 individual entries, and more than 250 photos. This “impressively comprehensive” (The Nation) book will delight everyone from the youngest fan to the hard-core aficionado.
5. Baseball Cop by Eddie Dominguez : Describes the corruption, including drug use, theft, and human trafficking, witnessed by the author during his nine years working in security for the Boston Red Sox and his six years working for Major League Baseball to clean up the sport.
6. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James : The Game provides a century's worth of American baseball history, told one decade at a time, with energetic facts and figures about How, Where, and by Whom the game was played. In The Players, you'll find listings of the top 100 players at each position in the major leagues, along with James's signature stats-based ratings method called “Win Shares,” a way of quantifying individual performance and calculating the offensive and defensive contributions of catchers, pitchers, infielders, and outfielders. And there's more: the Reference section covers Win Shares for each season and each player, and even offers a Win Share team comparison. A must-have for baseball fans and historians alike, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is as essential, entertaining, and enlightening as the sport itself.
7. K: a History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner : Even the slightest calibration can turn a baseball from an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation.Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball.
8. The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski : Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,​The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski that tells the story of the sport through the remarkable lives of its 100 greatest players. In the book's introduction, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator George F. Will marvels, "Posnanski must already have lived more than 200 years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?
9. Watching Baseball by Jerry Remy & Corey Sandler : Jerry Remy's name and face are already known to millions of fans. Every night during the baseball season, 400,000 or more households tune in to listen to his broadcast of the Red Sox game. But fans learned to love him years ago, when he was traded to the Red Sox in 1978, earning a trip to the All-Star game in his first year with the team.

BONUS MOVIES

42 : the Jackie Robinson Story

History was made in 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the professional baseball race barrier to become the first African American MLB player of the modern era. 42 tells the life story of Robinson and his history-making signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers under the guidance of team executive Branch Rickey.

Fever Pitch

According to Red Sox super-fan Ben Wrightman, finding romance is about as likely as his beloved team winning the World Series. But when Ben scores a beautiful new girlfriend, suddenly anything is possible.

A League of Their Own

A washed-up ballplayer is hired to coach in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League while the male pros are at war in 1943, and finds himself drawn back into the game by the heart and heroics of his team.

Moneyball

The story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.