Baseball in the Printed Form

Cat sold separately

I was a bit of a challenge for teachers who wanted me to read.

"Rob, read something other than sports," they'd say.

Don't get me wrong. I love To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby and other great books but I also love travel books and biographies and entertainment books (The Beatles? Hello?) and more.

And sports. Mostly baseball.

So after talking about this MLB.com baseball book story on Doubleheader, I received a tweet from Dylan Pescatore.

Great show today! @double5 Will definitely be picking up some of those books you mentioned!

— Dylan Pescatore (@DylanPescatore1) May 28, 2020

First, thanks! But, more importantly, I pulled everything off my bookcase (it used to be much worse) and took a look at the books that mean so much to me.

I should mention I don't have a physical copy of Luckiest Man by Jonathan Eig. I read that on my iPad and that's where it still is, along with all of Susan's books (which can be found here on Amazon). I hope to find a hard copy one day.

Otherwise, here's what I came up with.

It's not complete, of course. The book my dad bought for me in 1975 is packed in a special place, for instance.

But The Image of Their Greatness and The Ultimate Baseball Book are both there. Each one of those books was absolutely vital in grooming my passion for baseball history. In that same regard is The New York Yankees: an Illustrated History by Donald Honig as well as the similarly titled Yankees: An Illustrated History by George Sullivan and John Powers. Yankees Century by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson is not only phenomenal but the authors both came to WGCH in a limo to be interviewed by me, so that will always matter.

Staying with the Bombers, Pinstripe Empire by Marty Appel is probably my go-to history book now. His research just blew me away, to be honest, in the same way that Luckiest Man did about Lou Gehrig.

Then, of course, there's Yankee for Life. Yes, I'm biased. That's Bobby Murcer's book of course. I wanted to interview him when it came out but, as we all know, we lost Bobby Ray in 2008.

Play by Play by Neal Conan tells the true story of an NPR broadcaster who decided to take a shot at calling games in the Atlantic League. Coincidentally, I interviewed him just after calling my first game in the Atlantic League.

My friend J Daniel's book, Phinally, is in there. History doesn't have to be just about the Yankees (and I hope I've proved that). The year 1980 was important in my growth. Dan Epstein's Big Hair and Plastic Grass also hits the groove of my youth. Conversely, The First Fall Classic by Mike Vaccaro and Summer of '68 by Tim Wendel predate me.

Let's see, I haven't mentioned Summer of '49 yet which, frankly, doesn't need an introduction. Read it if you love baseball. Thank me later. The great David Halberstam wrote that one, while David J. Halberstam wrote Sports on NY Radio, which isn't just about baseball.

Speaking of radio, that brings me to the life-changing Voices of the Game by Curt Smith. Want to know how I became a baseball broadcasting historian? Start there and roll through Smith's other books (I think I have four), including Pull Up a Chair, which is the unauthorized biography of some guy named Vin Scully. I got to interview Smith for a full hour once about that book and I probably need to unearth the audio.

Red Barber is also there. The Broadcasters was rereleased in the 1990's and I got a copy of it. Let's say that Vin Scully followed his advice. So did I. Virtually all young broadcasters didn't hear his advice and don't care to. And that's too bad.

Oh yeah, there's Bernard Malamud's The Natural. No introduction necessary (but it's not the same as the movie).

Mickey Mantle "wrote" a few books, including The Mick. Mythology ensued.

I also included Richard Sandomir's breakdown of the life of Lou Gehrig and the movie about him, Pride of the Yankees. It kept me company (along with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) during jury duty selection a few years ago. Sadly, Richard and I never got together on a time to do an interview.

The last two to mention starts with the big book of The World Series. I'd read this in my preteen years to learn about every Fall Classic from 1903-1978 as it included full play-by-play breakdowns. It's how learned about Don Larsen and those 97 pitches on Oct 8, 1956.

Finally, there's a fairly beaten-up first edition of The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant by Douglass Wallop bought for me by my grandmother. She knew literally zero about baseball, which of course vexed me furiously. That book -- from 1954 -- became the movie musical Damn Yankees.

Keep in mind my grandfather was a huge baseball fan (loved the Yankees; hated Mel Allen) who played semi-pro baseball in New Jersey. He died eight years before I was born.

So my grandmother SAW Ruth and Gehrig play and didn't remotely care.

Sigh.

You've gotta have heart (and that's from the movie). Maybe you knew that.

I realize this list isn't everything but these are my books.

*****
We're in the home stretch of the 30 Day Song Challenge.

Day 27: A song that breaks your heart

Hmmm.

I was leaning back towards Frank Sinatra and his amazing Sings for Only the Lonely album but I decided to go down a different path.

Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me" is rough and so is J. Paul McCartney's "Yesterday." Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is deceptively sad. I could also grab "Song for the Dumped" by Ben Folds Five but that's more of an anthem versus being sad. It's wonderfully angry.

And "Crying" by Roy Orbison? Well, yeah. The title says it all. In country, there's "He Stopped Lovin Her Today" from George Jones. Just wow.

I don't have the heart to use "River" by Joni Mitchell. Maybe Susan used that one in her song challenge.

But I'm going to a brilliant piece of music from a brilliant album by a musical genius. Carole King's seminal Tapestry was a big record in my house. Packed with hits, it included her version of Will you Love Me Tomorrow that lacks the poppy happiness of The Shirelles' 1960 version. It's a much sadder song.

But "It's Too Late" is the call. It's a just pure acceptance that it's over. It's just done. "Something inside has died," she sings.

It has a pop edge to it and, yet, it doesn't. Like a breakup, it has a feeling of a mixed bag of emotions yet, when you get to the heart, it's sad.

"One of us is changin', or maybe we've just stopped tryin'..."