Best baseball novels...

Cafe Society
1

All right, let’s create a line-up card of the best baseball novels. Obviously you have Shoeless Joe by Kinsella, and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy also by Kinsella, and The Natural by B. Malamud (BTW, in the book he strikes out), and the Henry Wiggen series by Mark Harris (The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly are the classics), and The Celebrant by M. R. Greenburg, and If I Never Get Back and Havana Heat byDarryl Brock… oh, and Sometimes You See It Coming by Kevin Baker, and For the Love of the Game by Michael Shaara, and Columbus Slaughters Braves by Mark Friedman, and Sport by Mick Cochrane…

Keep 'em coming.

2

The Great American Novel* by Philip Roth
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.: J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover

Both are a bit surreal, but worth reading.

3

Yeah, I’ve read both of those – Philip Roth is one of my favorite writers. He works a little bit of baseball into every book, so he must be a huge fan. The Coover book is remarkable for being a book about fantasy baseball, but written like 35 years ago before many people even knew what it was.

4

If your interested in some non-fiction, I was a big fan of Ball Four by Jim Bouton. It’s a good read, and some interesting stories.

5

There’s a good fiction book by Bouton as well…it’s written with an ex-umpire and it’s the story of an over-the-hill pitcher who finally gets his chance to have a big break. Turns out this game is being called by an ump who is one day from retirement and being blackmailed into throwing it so a colleague can pay of a huge gambling debt. Every other chapter is written from the point of view of each guy, inning by inning and I thought it was really interesting.

Also in non-fiction: I found Moneyball to be downright gripping.

6

Sounds good, voguevixen. Thanks for the tip.

7

For a peek into the crazy-ass Yankees of the 70’s (Reggie, George, Billy and others), you simply gotta read The Bronx Zoo by Sparky Lyle.

8

Bizzaro, if you liked The Bronx Zoo then you ought to try Lyle’s novel too, The Year I Owned the Yankees: A Baseball Fantasy . It isn’t the greatest novel you’ll ever read, but parts of it are hilarious.

When I was a kid I devoured John R. Tunis’ series about a fictionalized Brooklyn Dodger team in the 1940s: The Kid From Tomkinsville, Keystone Kids, World Series, High Pockets, Schoolboy Johnson and The Kid Comes Back. I don’t know if they’ve aged well, or where one could find them, but as a boy I thought they were great stories.