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THE BOOKS OF SOMMER: Great Baseball READING

By Chris Tucker |

The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant by Douglas Wallop. The musical Damn Yankees was based on this tale of a middle-aged fan who sells his soul to the devil so he can lead the hapless Washington Senators to a pennant. Written before free agency and strikes changed the game forever, it seems hopelessly romantic today (imagine some $2 million-per pitcher with a 5-12 record singing, “You Gotta Have Heart.”) The ending, when not even the Devil can change an umpire’s mind, is priceless.

The Summer Game by Roger Angell. Closing chapter, “The Interior Stadium,1’ is the best statement yet on how and why to watch the game. Give it to your friend who moans, “They never do anything in baseball. They just stand there.” Also good: Five Seasons, Late Innings, and anything else with Angell’s name on it.

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn. An ex-sportswriter goes in search of the great Brooklyn Dodgers he covered in the ’50s-Snider, Reese, Robinson, et. al- after their playing days are over. A reportoriai triumph, but ultimately sobering; we forget that the now-famous title comes from DylanThomas: “I saw the boys of summer in their ruin.”

Why Time Begins on Opening Day by Thomas Boswell. Standout essay: “Bred to a Harder Thing Than Triumph.” In one of the great near-comebacks of modern baseball, the 1982 Baltimore Orioles almost caught the Milwaukee Brewers on the last day of the season. Boswell’s poignant account of the Orioles’ noble charge is tonic for fans sick to death of rapacious agents and dugout lawyers.

Men at Work by George Will. Perhaps another sign of liberalism’s decrepitude: the decade’s best book on baseball so far was written by the country’s best-known conservative pundit. But the conservative credo-view change with suspicion, hold fast to the old ways-makes perfect sense… in baseball. Excellent portraits of, among others, manager Tony LaRussa and hatting ace Tony Gwynn.

The Armchair Book of Baseball edited by John Thorn. Full of great stuff like Stephen Jay Gould’s essay, “The Extinction of the .400 Hitter”; Donald Hall’s chin-stroker, “Baseball and the Meaning of Life”; and the late Bart Giamatti’s jewel, “The Green Fields of the Mind: How and Why Baseball Always Breaks Your Heart. ” Yeah. And then they go on strike.

The Dixie Association by Donald Hays. A wise, funny novel about a raunchy hodgepodge of a minor-league team and the season they put it all together. Games happen, averages rise and fall, hut this book is really a hymn to the human spirit and the essence of the game. What the narrator says of a pitchers perfect game could be said of this near-flawless book: “It was pure baseball, pure art, and it changed nothing but that one night, when a man’s tight arm delivered us all for a while from ourselves.”

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