Yet those with knowledge of the game’s history know that these large sums of money being given to players came about relatively recently, after the reserve clause was done away and players won the right to be free agencies in December 1975. But not everyone who puts on a Major League uniform cashes checks with an abundance of zeroes, but more importantly, not every one of them gets to participate in one of MLB’s most lucrative benefits – a pension program. Thanks to omissions in previous editions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, 874 players find themselves left out of that pool of money, and that is a grave injustice that Douglas J. Gladstone tackles in his book A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB and the Players Association Threw 874 retirees a Curve.

What makes this book special is that it tackles a current, relevant and unfortunately not widely known about topic and gives the reader a very detailed look at it, albeit with the tone of advocacy journalism, which Gladstone readily acknowledges but doesn’t let it get in the way of making a book worth reading. It’s not a romantic book – if anything, it is a near tragedy that will leave a bitter taste in your mouth after you see baseball players and the teams turning their backs on their fellow players.

Gladstone assembles what seems to be his own 40-man roster of former players and executives to ultimately tell the story of how and why this group of players found themselves on the outside looking in. It can be tough to keep everyone straight at times, but that is a minor detail in what is otherwise a very good read.

If you are interested in baseball beyond what happens on the field, and in particular the business of baseball and how it relates to its former employees, this is a wonderful book that provides an eye-opening look behind the curtain of baseball’s labor negotiations and who has been left behind in the name of labor relations progress.

While this would be an easy approach to take, in The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris, author Mark Kurlansky turns the question around and looks at what baseball has done to one town in particular, San Pedro de Macoris, a fishing town on the southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic that has produced 79 of those 495 big leaguers, in hopes of showing how just how baseball has affected a town that in turn has produced some of the game’s best players.

To say that this is simply a baseball book would be selling it short — and would likely disappoint certain readers who go into it expecting nothing but baseball stories. Baseball is certainly a part of it – and a substantial part at that when you consider how much money baseball players from the town have earned and brought back to infuse into their city, as well as the baseball academies and related jobs that have come about because of a mix of situations. Add in that while the specific origins of baseball in the Dominican Republic are uncertain, there have been links to games played in the late 1800s, and you have a decent history from which to draw.

Of course, baseball is readily present, and the names of players who have made it to the Major Leagues from San Pedro de Macoris are plentiful – Alfonso Soriano, Robinson Canó, Sammy Sosa, Tony Fernandez, Rico Carty, Luis Castillo, George Bell, Joaquin Andujar…the list goes on and on. Each has different stories and struggles – some were heralded as stars early on, while others had to fight for attention and take a longer path to the Major Leagues.

What unifies all of them as Kurlansky points out in his introductory chapter is their shared desire of “making it,” and thus escaping the laborious work of the sugar cane fields or the fishing boats. These players all start out as young boys with improvised equipment such as milk cartons for gloves, balls of socks for baseballs and sugar cane reeds or broom handles for bats, who somehow through a mix of hard work, good fortune and talent make it off the island and into the ranks of professional baseball, with the most elite among them donning one of 30 Major League uniforms.

These dreams are not without their risks however – a bad break in the form of an injury or a bad day at a tryout can cost them potentially millions of dollars, and return them to a life of poverty, often dragging their families along with them.

But what makes the book shine is the context in which Kurlansky introduces you to these players. He is quick to point out the differences between the Dominican Republic and its Caribbean neighbors – even down to the name of the country, that when compared to Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba and others, leaves much to be desired. The Dominican Republic is a nation that has been invaded time and time again over the last 500 years, twice by Spain, three times by Haiti, twice by France, and twice by the United States, as well as by corporations and as Kurlansky so eloquently shows us – by Major League Baseball and its teams in hopes of finding a future talent at a very affordable price.

The Dominican Republic has also been the receiving land of immigrants from throughout the Caribbean who have come seeking work in the sugar cane fields or in a factory – and the resulting multiculturalism has not been without its share of discrimination, prejudice and forced acceptance and change.

It was also a major beneficiary of the United States’ embargo against Cuba, as teams had to look elsewhere to find talent that they could bring stateside without the headache and heartbreak that came along with trying to get a Cuban out of the now-closed country. That benefit is still seen some fifty years later, as more and more kids from the Dominican Republic enter the ranks of Major League Baseball each year.

Which takes the reader back to the players — the early ones who suffered discrimination just like the Negro Leaguers and African-Americans throughout the middle part of the 1900s because of the color of their skin, let alone a language barrier that often separated them from their new world. The cultural differences about how the game was played and life was lived that branded them as hot-headed brawlers who had little use for manners or decorum, only to be proven wrong by players like Alfredo Griffin who made a name for himself as a peacemaker and leader who had the ability to hold teams together.

The Eastern Stars surprised me by how wide-ranging the topics covered were — while I expected to learn about the players who came from San Pedro de Macoris, I also learned more about the sugar industry, fishing and cultural struggles than I expected. It is that wider lens that Kurlansky uses to capture his subject that makes this book a winner and the reader and baseball fan who can watch his or her favorite Dominican-born players with a new appreciation that much better.

Many fans, even those outside of the world of baseball card collecting, are familiar with the crown jewel of the set, the 1906 T206 Honus Wagner. In 2007, Michael O’Keeffe and Teri Thompson put out a book titled simply, The Card, which looked at the history of the most well-known card from this set, and possibly the most well-known sports card of all. With its combination of scarcity and a portrait of one of the game’s greatest players, it has recently fetched just under $3 million at auction.

But what about the rest of the set? What about those other players who had their image printed onto these little pieces of paper and inserted into packs of cigarettes? They now have a book dedicated just to them – The T206 Collection: The Players and Their Stories, by Tom Zappala and Ellen Zappala.

If you’ve ever collected baseball cards, you’re familiar with the index card – the card that you dreaded getting in packs because all it did was list the other cards in the set and was designed to be a checklist for which cards you had and which you didn’t. Think of this book as an index card for the T206 collection, but with a hardcover and loads of brilliant photographs of the cards and baseball equipment from the early 1900s, as well as brief biographies of each of the players featured in the set.

Tom Zappala

The book starts out strong, featuring the 38 players who would end up going into the Hall of Fame from this set. Some of the game’s great names live in this chapter, like Cobb, Young, Mathewson, the Big Train, and many others. These are the jewels of the set – where name recognition is frequent and on-field accomplishments are plentiful.

The “could be, should be” Hall of Famers highlight chapter two, as the authors select 12 players featured on T206 cards who have on-field credentials that could, or in some cases should warrant admission into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Chapters three through six look at the lesser known players — divided up as “The Uncommons,” “The Bad Boys of Baseball,” “The Minor Leaguers” and “The Commons.” Each of the players featured in these chapters, as well as the preceding chapters, gets a short biography to accompany photos of the cards he appeared on, as well as list of the Major League teams he played for. While a bit short at times, I could certainly see this book becoming the inspiration for a reader to further investigate players of this era, as the authors give the reader just enough to give you an idea of who the player was, what he was known for, and leave you wanting to know more about many of them.

The book is wrapped up by an informative chapter written by Joe Orlando, president of PSA – Professional Sports Authenticator and PSA/DNA Authentication Services, as well as the editor of the Sports Market Report, titled “Understanding the Value Within the T206 Set.”

To my knowledge there is no other book on the market that gives this set of baseball cards the kind of treatment that the Zappalas and Orlando do, and it is a welcomed addition to the library of baseball knowledge. Few sets truly deserve this kind of attention – the 1933 Goudey and 1952 Topps being two that would – and the authors do it a great service and bring to light the rest of the set beyond the Wagner card.

If anything, layout of the chapters is my main gripe with the book — the authors chose to list players alphabetically, which unfortunately ignored some of the more natural connections that exist between players in the set. For instance, in the Hall of Famers section, the heralded double play combination of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance of the Chicago Cubs would seem a natural trio to feature together, yet they are separated by several pages.

Ellen Zappala

Chapter three, which has the most promise as it looks at players from the era who were known for being “a little bit different,” as the authors eloquently put it, was weighed down simply by the length of the chapter – at 68 pages, it became a bit fatiguing to sift through all the players mentioned. Had it been broken down into two or three smaller chapters, the great stories would have had an easier time standing out – such as reading about the real Bull Durham, or meeting the man with the lowest on-base percentage with a minimum 5000 at-bats.

The standout of the book, at least from an informational standpoint, was the final chapter, penned by Orlando. As a professional who understands the factors that go into making certain cards more valuable than others, he breaks down the intricacies of the T206 set and gives the reader a feel for what factors had to come together to make the T206 such an appealing set and why it lives on as one of the greatest card sets of all time. It’s Orlando’s ability to explain the nuances of the set to the reader that adds context and to the pictures and biographies in the earlier chapters.

If you’re a fan of baseball cards but can’t manage a purchase of the entire T206 set, this book proves to be a worthy substitute, as it puts the 524-card set into a hardcover book worthy of placement on your coffee table that not only shows you the cards but will introduce you to the players whose images graced the set. There are some non-Hall of Famer names in this book you’ll likely recognize but likely many more you won’t, making this a great way to explore turn-of-the-century baseball and see connections to today’s game both on and off the field as well as through collectible pictures of ballplayers.

You can read more about this book and the authors at T206Players.com.

To say that Willie Mays exemplifies the concept of being the right person in the right place at the right time would be a gross understatement, and in his recent authorized biography of Willie Mays, author James S. Hirsch goes into never-seen-before detail as to just what launched Willie Mays into the stratosphere of baseball history.

As Hirsch notes in the prologue, Mays “has long been an enigma who spoons out just enough biographical morsels to nourish (fans’) curiosity but not satisfy their appetite.” For someone such as myself who hasn’t followed Mays’s life all that closely, that seems about right. While he doesn’t stay completely out of the public eye, for someone of his stature in the game of baseball he certainly isn’t at the forefront of many off-the-field discussions.

Taking on the task of bringing the complete story of Willie Mays was no small task as Hirsch reminds the reader, and his treatment of his subject is admirable and complete, at least to the reader who doesn’t have additional information. I’m sure some of Mays’s teammates and longtime friends could add pages of stories and anecdotes if they were given the chance. However, speculation on how many pages this book could reach if more cooks were allowed in the kitchen is not the point of this review.

Hirsch manages to keep a fairly level tone and sense of excitement throughout the book, which left a tinge of disappointment with me at the conclusion of the book. Mays’s life had some clear points that were defining both on a personal and professional level, and while they are discussed fairly thoroughly, Hirsch didn’t seem to take the brakes off and give the reader the full tilt of emotion that was I had to think was present at the time. His attempt to purchase a home in San Francisco, while detailed poignantly, felt like it was missing something, as did the sections that covered the response to Mays’s lack of desire to get involved in race relations the way his contemporaries were. While I respect Hirsch’s ability to keep the train from running off the tracks, I wouldn’t have complained about hearing the wheels grind and feeling the car sway a bit more.

There is no way to avoid mentioning that the book weighs in at a relatively hefty 560 or so pages, depending whether you read the acknowledgments or not. Some will say this is nothing, some will say this is a beast of a book — I tend to skew towards the latter, especially in this age of sound bites and Tweets. However, Hirsch never seems to waste a page in telling Mays’s story. He keeps the chapters at a length that in turn keep the book moving and keep the reader’s attention focused on the topic. Thankfully he went with 36 chapters, as opposed to opting for 24 and trying to draw a connection to the number Mays wore on his back throughout his career.

For fans of one of – if not the greatest to play the game of baseball, this book is an invaluable read that will pique your interest and show you sides of Mays that you have likely never seen before. The things that he doesn’t talk about in interviews come up in this book, and while neither scandalous nor overly salacious, they are poignant and important in understanding this legend of baseball.

Such is not the case with Doug Glanville‘s debut book, The Game From Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View.

Fortunately, the hype machine did not reach me before the book did – the good folks at Henry Holt and Company managed to slip this one in my mailbox without much fanfare, which I believe was a smart move on their part, as it allowed my to dive into it without any preconceived notion of just how great or scandalous it might be.

Glanville, a veteran of nine seasons in the big leagues, brings a remarkably understated amount of insight to his book, which is a refreshing thing in this era of Tweeted scandals and sound bites dominating the nightly news. He does not speak with the trepidation of someone who needs to be wary of offending Hall of Fame voters, nor does he write with the rampant disregard of former players who are seeking attention, one Mr. Jose Canseco being a prime example. Rather, he knows that setting every bridge he has ever crossed on fire will do him no good, yet guarding every sacred secret in the game is no path to post-baseball success.

The book ended up being split into two distinct parts for me — the first six chapters, which cover Glanville’s playing career, and the following five chapters in which he allows his intellectual and insightful side to emerge as he reflects on life after baseball and casts a critical yet tempered eye on the state of baseball today.

The difference between the first six chapters and the latter five is remarkable — Glanville’s pragmatism in the first half about choosing gloves and the recognition that comes with being a professional athlete in the first half takes on a much deeper tone in the second, as illustrated in his trip to buy a luxury car and his commentary on the struggles that pain athletes once the jersey has been ‘ripped from their backs.’

Glanville comments on a number of topics in the second half, from promiscuity on the road to steroids, as well as the way athletes are treated because of their job and the wake-up call that is finding life after baseball, and addresses all of them with an insight that is surprisingly deep. The University of Pennsylvania graduate and occasional columnist for the New York Times shows an ability to provide fair criticism without overstepping his bounds, thus providing the reader a look at the game of baseball that I have rarely seen. This isn’t the talking head kind of commentary that is seen on television, nor is it the soapbox pontificating that is heard on radio or the salacious say-it-first-prove-it-later commentary often found on blogs; rather this is insight from a credible source who has the ability to communicate in well thought out, coherent sentences.

This is one of the better baseball memoirs that I have had the pleasure of reading, and I would encourage you to take a chance on it as well. While the first half of the book may leave you wondering why you picked up the book, the second half will quickly answer that question and leave you wanting to hear more from Mr. Glanville, something that I hope we are able to do for quite some time.

With his seminal book Men at Work, George F. Will gave baseball fans a chance to see inside the game through the eyes of three of baseball’s best players and one of its best managers of the late 1980s: Orel Hershiser, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Jr., and Tony LaRussa.

Twenty years since its initial release and widespread acclaim, the book is being re-released with a new introduction by Will, in which he touches on many of the things that have transpired in baseball since 1990 – the steroid scandal, discussions about how the game has slowed down to a miserable crawl, and the continued economic changes the game must address, to name a few. While impressive, it seemed to lose its luster by the time I got to the end of the book – a point I will touch on later.

As for the book itself, it remains untouched, appearing just as it did when it debuted in 1990. Will recruits the previously mentioned foursome to take him into the world of baseball, for as he often explained it in interviews, the book he wanted to read about baseball simply didn’t exist, so he decided to write it. With Hershisher as his guide for pitching, Gwynn for hitting, Ripken for defense and LaRussa for managing, as well as a strong roster of other players, coaches and broadcasters, Will shatters the perpetual notion that baseball is slow and dull, by showing the myriad of situational possibilities that a player and manager must consider and address on each and every pitch.

Men at Work remains today the same hard, honest look at the copious amount of labor that goes into being skilled at the craft of baseball. Yes, there is a romantic side to the game, as Will, like the majority of his readers, will never truly understand and appreciate the combination of work, luck, talent and good circumstance that results in a player ending up on a Major League field, let alone in a record book or enshrined in the Hall of Fame. In fact, I often think many players don’t appreciate the equation that must occur to produce a big league career, but that is another topic for another time.

Will is not shy to admit that baseball is a glorious game, but he is just as forthcoming with the many pitfalls that players and managers must avoid in order to be great at it – and it is those pitfalls that seem to create the chasm that separates fans from players and results in what I occasionally see as boorish behavior by fans at baseball games. He reminds us that the game looks easy from the stands because those who are on the field make it look that way. For the common man, to stand in the batters box against Tim Lincecum, or have a ball hit to our right at shortstop and have to make the throw across the diamond would allow us to see the game in a completely different and more appreciative light.

What amazes me is that with Men at Work so readily available to the baseball fan for 20 years, there appears to be so many people that haven’t read it. I’ve never done a formal poll as to this, but after reading this book, it seems impossible that one could be an obnoxious, boorish fan. That’s not to say that you can’t be passionate, or even vocal at times when something doesn’t go your way, much like you would at the office or at home. But anything beyond showing signs appreciative support for a hard and hopefully productive day at the office seem beyond me.

Having grown up a baseball fan but not being blessed with the talent to play it well let alone the opportunity to even try, I have attempted to understand the game as best as possible instead. That is the reason for this site, as well as BaseballOnMyBrain.com, and why I go to and watch as many games as I can, hoping to chip away at the granite slab that is baseball knowledge. As Will reminds the reader throughout the book, this is best done with a small chisel as opposed to a massive sledgehammer. It takes time, patience and practice to become just moderately well-versed in the game, and even at that point one should not refer to them self as any kind of an expert. Not once in the book does Will hit you with a sledgehammer of insight or opinion, but rather offers up a steady stream of bite size pieces of fact, insight and opinion from those who get to work between the white lines.

Make no mistake – Men at Work is a heavy book, laden with ideas to digest and process. But for any one with an interest in baseball, it is something you really must read and think about if you want to develop in your knowledge and appreciation for the game.

As mentioned earlier, while there is gold in the new introduction to the book, it seems that the real mine of opportunity for Mr. Will to further educate the baseball world lie in the opportunity to rewrite the Conclusion, titled “Maybe the Players Are Livelier.” In the introduction, he already names the four subjects who would comprise the cast of Men at Work 2.0 should it ever come about: Tim Lincecum, Albert Pujols, Chase Utley and Mike Scioscia. To see that he has already pondered the thought is exciting, although the more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that in many ways, a second version isn’t really needed. The only thing I would really like to see, and Will admitted he left out during an April 2010 interview on MLB Network, was a section on the catcher. If you’ve followed my writing you know I have a strong bias for catchers, and once again, they get left out of the story, just like Paul Revere’s horse gets left out of that great tale.

What makes Men at Work so incredibly valuable to baseball fans is that 20 years later, it’s almost impossible to tell that it wasn’t recently written. While LaRussa is still managing, all three players have retired, records have changed and stadiums have come and gone, but the core lessons and insights about the game are just as relevant now as they were then. There were numerous times I forgot that I reading about baseball in the late 1980s, because while the names may change, the fundamentals of the game do not. There were power hitters back then as there are now, as well as singles hitters, base stealers, hard throwing pitchers and junk ballers, and every other characteristic you could label onto a player.

With a list price of just $14.99, there is no reason this book shouldn’t be read by any and every man, woman and child who labels themselves a baseball fan. You will certainly end up a more informed fan who will be able to go to the ball park or turn on the TV and see the game of baseball in a more educated and appreciative way.

To the uninitiated, or those who just don’t have a deeper level of interest in baseball, this is hard to explain. Many people show up to the ballpark and watch a game while thinking that it is just a single game without giving much thought to what it draws on in the past or how it might affect the future.

Likewise, they might also miss subtleties and nuances within the game that are a a mix of rules, showmanship, and what Jason Turbow and Michael Duca refer to as The Baseball Codes, the title of their new book from Pantheon Books.

As they explain right out of the gate, trying to write a book like this is difficult, because the codes of on- and off-field behavior in baseball are both fairly guarded by players, managers, and those in the game, and they come and go as the game as a whole changes.

Turbow and Duca start by breaking down “the code” into four distinct categories: on the field, retaliation, cheating and teammates. Under each of these four umbrella headings fall several more specific chapters, each loaded with examples from throughout baseball’s history of how the codes have been implemented, developed, refined and as is the constant theme, overstepped by players who were either too young and green – and often uninformed – to know better, or by players too wrapped up in the moment.

Not surprisingly, the book looks at many of the flashy instances of how the code comes into play — pitchers throwing at hitters and bench clearing brawls — and the events that lead to these kind of events: staring too long at a home run, running up the score, or as seems to be the case often throughout the book, doing anything against Nolan Ryan. The career strikeout leader’s name comes up throughout the book as one of the last examples of players that lived up to the code and had the tenacity to enforce it with a fastball.

For me however, the strength of the book came from some of the lesser known aspects of the code that get enforced. For instance, I have no tolerance for fans who boo when pitchers throw over to first base – I understand that it’s not the most exciting part of the game, but as Turbow and Duca so wonderfully explain, there are many benefits to be gained from it – and not just in keeping a player close to the bag. A well placed pick-off that ends up coming down on a runner’s bare hand or into his face are friendly reminders that some aspect of the code may have been violated along the way.

Suffice to say that with 23 chapters, the examples of how the code gets carried out are plentiful, and will leave you much better informed as to its role in baseball once you finish the book. At times, the copious amount of examples that Turbow and Duca bring in seemed to weigh down the book, but by the end it becomes apparent that this is one of the best ways to illustrate their points. The pair let players, managers and broadcasters do much of the talking in the book, either through direct interviews or by recapping published quotes. By doing this, they get the reader as close to the situation as possible, especially given how hard it can be to get players to fess up when the code calls for them to do something such as hit a batter.

The book is better executed than Ross Bernstein’s The Code, published in 2008, which tackled the same topic. While checking in at nearly equal page counts, The Baseball Codes feels much tighter and better put together. The readability is very good, with succinct chapters that should have no problem keeping your attention.

Like many baseball books,  The Baseball Codes is a good book for the fan who wants to watch the game at a deeper and more informed level. To take the subject matter to the ballpark is a different matter though – as being informed about a topic and actually being able to see it being carried out are two different things, and something that for most fans is almost impossible except in hindsight.

To say that baseball is intertwined with America would be an amazing injustice – and in many more ways and at many deeper levels than you might think. In his latest book, The Empire Strikes Out, Robert Elias shows how baseball transformed from a simple game into a tool of spreading American idealism not only throughout the world but domestically as well.

Elias begins his introductory chapter with a quote from the French Algerian philosopher Albert Camus, stating “The true patriot is one who gives his highest loyalty not to his country as it is, but to what it can and ought to be.” This quote, innocent as it might seem at the time, is one that the reader must keep in mind while reading the book, as Elias’ critical look at how baseball has been intertwined with American expansion will likely challenge the typical flag-waving fan.

Over the course of 12 chapters, as well as an opinion-laden 13th, Elias take the reader through American history, from 1775 all the way up to 2009, bringing in baseball as a hand-holding partner of the United States’ desire to expand throughout the world and convert, control, and cash in on people in other lands.

When one stops and thinks about it, the tie-ins are plentiful – from the drafting of ballplayers to fight in wars, to Barry Zito of the San Francisco Giants and his “Strikeouts for Troops” program. Let’s not leave out the San Diego Padres and their camouflage jerseys, or the world tours led by Albert Spalding to promote not only the American way but his budding sporting goods company.

Tie-ins and associations, as well as traditions that come from culture, religion, or national dictate, only have the credence that the participants are willing to give them. There is no inherent necessity to sing The Star Spangled Banner before a baseball game or that a fleet of military jets fly over the stadium before the All-Star Game or the World Series. Yet were one to propose that a ballgame not start with the playing or singing of the anthem, the idea – and possibly the person – would likely be shot down as unpatriotic and ridiculous. Yet the more we allow them to occur, the more they become ingrained and immune from scrutiny.

Certainly some of these relationships have developed without the intention of brain-washing the American people into agreeing with the government’s foreign plans, but as Elias shows, a good number have been formed to promote the idea of American superiority and manifest destiny. This is the core of the book — and what Elias challenges the reader to look at and accept.

Robert Elias (from RobElias.com)

The book is full of tidbits of baseball information that Elias has dug up to illustrate his points. From the explanation of where the term “Yankee” comes from at the start of the first chapter, to the origins of the term bullpen, to his comparison of globalization to baseball’s farm system of minor league teams, the book is full of “I didn’t know that” moments that will enhance your appreciation for the game that you see on the field today. It is this hook that will keep the pages turning, even though the book at times does feel a bit academic for those of us not reporting to classrooms on a regular basis.

What I found to be lacking, at least for those who don’t share Elias’ academic leaning, is some sauce for the story. Elias searches far and wide for sources and information to support his case, but at certain times over his 294 pages the breadth of information would have been gladly exchanged for some depth and development. I would have loved to been able to share one or two really juicy stories with people after reading it, as opposed to telling them about the book from a flyover perspective.

Elias wastes no time being critical about what he sees as missteps in the United States’ history, and it has earned him his share of critics.

Steven V. Roberts of The Washington Post, wasting no time in his review of the book, starts off by saying that “Robert Elias seems to hate America and hate baseball.” For me, nothing could be farther from the truth. Being critical of America’s approach to globalization, or “Americanization” as some might call it, does not mean that one hates America. Having sat with Elias at several baseball games and exchanged e-mails about the perils and plights of the Giants, Mariners, Diamondbacks and other teams, I assure you he does not hate baseball – at least not the game itself. He has played the game extensively, has children that play baseball, and will gladly engage in an informed conversation on most any topic of the game.

Elias even writes extensively about his relationship with baseball on his website, which further illustrates both his fondness for and dissatisfaction with the game.

While I will not respond to Mr. Roberts’ review, he seemed to be offended by Elias’ opinions that America’s growth has an ugly side, as does the business side of baseball. If you can’t swallow the fact that neither baseball nor the United States is perfect and under God’s watchful eye and guiding hand, then I suggest you avoid this book. It is not meant for you, and you’d be better off living in your make-believe world, cleaning off your rose-colored glasses.

As Elias will tell you, there is a lot to love about baseball, but there is a lot to be critical about and wary of when looking towards the future. The purity of a parent and child having a catch on a warm day is one to be cherished, as are the squeals of children in a Little League game and the roar of the crowd when the home team wins a ball game. But as fallible creatures, humans have done things that fall short of our potential and should be subjected to not just scrutiny and criticism, but used as mistakes to learn from so that history does not continue to repeat itself. This is what Elias seeks to do and accomplishes it to a level that has clearly irritated critics.

The book, unsurprisingly, is delivered in classic academic form – lots and lots of history, references and examples that all lead up to the final chapter, which is where Elias makes his argument about not just how baseball has been used to spread the American way, but its ramifications and an opinion on how he feels about it. It is in that 13th chapter that Elias serves up the question of how baseball should proceed – either doubling up on its association with patriotism, or letting football take up that battle while becoming a beacon for what the country could, and should, be like going forward.

If you have the ability to read and digest criticism of both the United States and its national pastime, I doubt that you’ll be disappointed by The Empire Strikes Out. You may not agree with everything, but I don’t think that is Elias’ point; it is simply to open your eyes and cast a warning on the future of the country and baseball by taking a critical look at its past. By doing so, he exposes you to a history rich with lofty ideals but littered by faulty executions, and leads you back to the present moment and offers a set of paths to walk down, while ultimately leaving decision about which one to walk down to each of us.

In Traded, Doug Decatur takes a sample of trades throughout history – those he describes as the most lopsided in baseball history, and promises to take you ‘inside’ them – a term that unfortunately never quite gets explained.

Decatur starts by explaining a bit about trades and that they are just one of several options a general manager has at his disposal to improve his team. This, of course, should be no surprise to the reader, but it made me wonder if Decatur was somehow weakening the quality of his topic by diminishing a bit. Trades certainly do not make or break teams on their own – they can have profound impacts of course, or they can be fairly innocent, and even if you make a trade there are many more variables that go into weighing it’s eventual merit.

Decatur asks a critical question early on – do lopsided trades matter or not? – which he answered with the words that were swirling around in my head at the time: in some cases. That cast an unfavorable light on the rest of the book for me — if the author is stating that the main topic of his book doesn’t always matter, then what is the purpose, other than to compose more lists and put more words on paper? Between this admission and his readiness to admit that trades are just part of the big equation, I was beginning to doubt that I’d really enjoy the book.

Decatur uses Bill James’ Win Shares totals to assign value to trades – a methodology that he explains nicely in the early pages of the book. Win shares is not a perfect method of course, and many trades have to be looked at in larger contexts to fully appreciate their value to a team.

After his introductory chapters, Decatur moves quickly into the list of the 306 most lopsided trades of the 20th century. Note that I said 20th century, as opposed to baseball history as the subtitle would indicate. Decatur explains in his introductory chapters that the book will only cover 1900-1999. Which leads me to my first eyebrow-raiser from the list: if this is the case, then why are the Washington Nationals mentioned in the book? Shouldn’t the Montreal Expos be noted instead?

My guess is that Decatur had to make a decision somewhere along the way as to how to refer to teams, and elected to refer to them by their current names. But the Texas Rangers didn’t make all the trades they’re given credit or fault for — some were made when they were the Washington Senators, and the list goes on. It’s certainly convenient to group things by franchise and lump everything under one team logo, but the real juicy meat of trade discussions comes from going into the why of a trade – what did the team need, what did they have to offer, and who was calling the shots at a particular point. To really go inside a trade, Decatur needed to go back to newspaper clippings, interviews and team makeups and figure out why a trade happened and what made each GM pull the trigger on a particular deal. This is where the promise of being taken inside the most lopsided trades in baseball history began to fall apart, and where I would venture to say quantity outweighed quality.

Following the list – which is headlined by the 1991 trade that sent Steve Finley, Curt Schilling and Pete Harnisch from the Orioles to the Astros in exchange for Glenn Davis, a net win of 609 future win shares – Decatur ventures into a very brief team-by-team history that spotlights the positive lopsided trades a team has made, the players acquired via a lopsided trade who appeared in postseason play, as well as the best trades in franchise history, the negative lopsided trades, and a quick paragraph about the GM who made the best trade in franchise history.

The final chapters contain some of the true highlights of the book – in particular, a pair of chapters about the 13 red flags of lopsided trades and how to apply those red flags to midseason trading deadline deals. While there is no magical formula provided to figure out whether or not a trade is lopsided, there are at least some things to keep an eye out for.

A final chapter touches on lopsided trades of the 21st century, a nice touch even though it only checks in at a page and a half and features just four deals and a “hopeful” that Decatur thinks might turn out to be a lopsided trade that could be included in a future edition.

Unfortunately though, this brief section also contained a very noticeable error – the misspelling of Richie Sexson’s last name, which ended up as Sexton. Having spent time with the Mariners and failing to live up his free agent signing, “Big Richie” has a spot in my memory that is less than favorable. Seeing an error like this – the misspelling of a player’s last name – is simply unacceptable.

Likewise, I noticed an error in the chapter on the Arizona Diamondbacks – when Decatur is talking about Luis Gonzalez, and mentions that a piece of gum supposedly chewed by him sold at auction for $10,000 in 1982. While the auction part is true, the event happened in 2002 – some 20 years later. Unfortunately these two errors casts doubt on the rest of the book, especially some of the lesser-known bits of trivia and information. It’s unfortunate, because that became the final strike in this book’s at-bat.

The topic is certainly interesting and valid and one that will continue to generate lots of discussion among fans, but Decatur’s book leaves a bit lacking for my preference. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Rob Neyer to cover for one his “Big Book of Baseball (fill in the blank)” works, something Decatur might want to peak at should he attempt a rewrite or a future edition. Decatur’s treatment of the topic leaves quite a bit to be desired, from his own positioning of the validity of the topic, to his treatment of the team sections, to the spell and fact checking that was missing at several points in the book.

Traded simply isn’t worth trading your money for.

Lew Paper takes on the task of Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, what many consider to be one of the greatest performances ever to grace a baseball field, and approaches it by profiling the 19 men who took the field that day.

Using a chapter format that reminded me of Charles Euchner’s The Last Nine Innings, Paper profiles a player in each chapter (with one exception, where he profiles two players), followed by a brief recap of what happened that inning.

The book is tremendous, as it gives a remarkable picture of the players involved in that October 8, 1956 game that would forever imprint itself on the minds of baseball fans not just of the day, but for years to come. The game featured seven players that would be inducted into the Hall of Fame -Mickey Mantle, Enos Slaughter, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, Duke Snider and Roy Campanella – and one, Gil Hodges, whom many believe should be there as well. Fifteen of the nineteen players made the All-Star Game at some point in their career. It was played in one of the games grandest cathedrals, Yankee Stadium, in front of 64,519 people – a crowd that no Major League ballpark could hold today.

Paper’s approach of looking at each of the players on the field that day works very well, and serves as a ready reminder of the numerous personalities and backgrounds that shape the game of baseball. The game had just marked its first decade of being integrated, as Jackie Robinson, who debuted 10 years prior in 1947, would end up retiring at the end of the season rather than report to the New York Giants after the Dodgers sold it to them. Many of the players in that game were nearing the end of their playing careers, and Paper provides a concise look into their lives before, during, and after Don Larsen struck out Dale Mitchell for the final out.

You may be wondering – how does Paper do this, given that many of the players are long dead, yet there are so many quotes? I wondered this too – so I decided to flip through the book a bit.

It turns out that Paper’s approach is similar to the one Mark Stewart and Mike Kennedy used in their 2006 work Hammering Hank: How the Media Made Henry Aaron. Paper compiled his quotes from dozens, possibly into the hundreds of sources over the past 50 years. He readily admits this, on page 365 though, which initially left a bad impression with me. Rather than burden the pages by dozens of footnotes, the references that Paper used are consolidated into a 35-page chapter of endnotes.

Lew Paper

Now it would seem that Paper isn’t trying to pull a fast one on the reader, nor is he someone who just combed the records for quotes and pieced them together. Perfect is his fifth work, following up on four previous books – John F. Kennedy: The Promise and the Performance, Brandeis: An Intimate Biography, Empire: William S. Paley and the Making of CBS, and a novel, Deadly Risks. He certainly has an academic background, as he is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Harvard Law School, as well as Georgetown University, where he obtained a masters in law degree. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The American Scholar. He is also a practicing lawyer in Washington, DC.

The idea for the book, Paper writes, came largely from two visits to a baseball camp in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, called the Mickey Mantle Memorial Week of Dreams, which later evolved into Heroes in Pinstripes, a camp offering the chance to play with and learn from Yankee legends. It was there that he got to speak with with several of the players from the game, including Larsen, Hank Bauer and Enos Slaughter. But needing much more to make a book of this scope work, he turned to the Hall of Fame and their records, as well as to Peter Golenbock, who has written a number of baseball books, including many on the Dodgers and Yankees.

Which is what brings me to how I find myself challenged to look at this book. On one hand, I am thoroughly impressed by the product that resulted after Paper’s years of research and compiling of quotes and information. It is a resource that breaks down a momentous event in baseball history incredibly well and will likely be turned to by many interested in the subject for years to come. As I ask myself after I read every book – am I a better and more knowledgeable fan after reading this book? Undoubtedly.

On the other hand, I feel like there should be so many other people’s names on the cover of the book – or at least given more credit at its start and throughout the pages. To paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton, Paper is able to see so far with this work because he stands on the shoulders of giants. While Paper provides them credit in the endnotes, the sheer quantity of resources relied on seems to warrant a different, and better, kind of treatment.

Loving, and therefore recommending Perfect requires a bit of trust on both my part and your part. As Paper readily admits in the endnotes, he relied on the work and writings of numerous other people. As time goes on, memories change, stories become embellished, and things don’t get documented as accurately as they should. Depending on your existing knowledge of the game and the players, some things might conflict with what you already have learned. Paper acknowledges this and provides his thought process for resolving conflicts in stories, and while some might nitpick, many will find this an apt and capable recap and breakdown of the game and those involved in it. However, given how long ago Larsen authored his masterpiece, there is certainly plenty of time for discrepancies to creep into the story.

I feel compelled to mention that the editor’s eye in me did catch a couple of editorial bobbles – a misspelling of home plate umpire Babe Pinelli’s name, what looked like an errant footnote towards the end – but things that are ultimately forgivable and nothing worth quibbling over.

Overall though, a worthwhile read on a topic that will live on in baseball lore for many years to come.