Baseball Reading for Opening Day

Winter’s finally making its retreat, which means it time for baseball. The Phillies and the Braves kicked things off last night, and now Opening Day is finally here. This is always the first step towards summer for me. Soon I’ll be memorizing statistics that I’ll forget by November, and making excuses to watch afternoon games in bars when I should be productive.

Here’s a list of some great reading about our national pastime. These books are presented in no particular order, and there is sure to be plenty of great baseball reading I’ve missed. I’ve linked to the best ebook deal I could find when possible (also, it never hurts to go to the library). Feel free to add your own suggestions below.

Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa

by W.P. Kinsella

This book was later retitled just Shoeless Joe, and made into a film you may have heard of called Field of Dreams. It’s a great book and a great movie. Like many good baseball books, it’s not so much about baseball but about self discovery, reconciliation with one’s past, and “American ideals” such as familial duties and love.

Bang the Drum Slowly

by Mark Harris

Mark Harris wrote a whole bunch of baseball novels, many beloved. This is probably his most famous, though it is a sequel (to The Southpaw, which I’ve never read). It’s both gruff and touching, about a baseball team whose catcher tries to conceal a terminal illness. Also made into a pretty good film.

The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship

by Mark Halberstam

This is one of those books I was given as a gift (from a Medieval history professor, of all things) and liked so much I felt the need to give my copy to my father when I was done. It is a touching book about the endurance of friendship, beginning with Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky visiting Ted Williams on his deathbed before recounting their years as friends and teammates on the Red Sox.

Baseball: a Literary Anthology

by various authors

This book compiles almost every great bit of writing on baseball ever. If you pick up any one book on this list, it should be this. The flap copy the Library of America has is a far better description than I can do, so read what it says about this awesome collection here.

Jim the Boy

by Tony Earley

This isn’t really a baseball book, more a book about America or Americana. But baseball, and the few bits of equipment necessary to play the game, mean a lot to Jim as he learns about himself and the world. A pretty good book, and it will probably make you nostalgic for having a catch on a summer evening.

Also, Elysian Fields Quarterly is a literary journal built around baseball as a theme. I’ve yet to read it (just signed up for a subscription) but it comes recommended highly by those who have. No digital content yet, but you may be able to find issues at your library if you don’t feel like ponying up for a subscription.

Other Book Suggestions: Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, by Eliot Asinof; October 1964, by David Halberstam;  The Natural, by Bernard Malamud; Past Time: Baseball as History, by Jules Tygiel.

And, in the spirit of the internet, here’s a video of Jose Canseco letting a fly ball bounce off his head and over the wall for a home run: