Why We Love Baseball - A History in 50 Moments (Joe Posnanski, 2023)

Gift from Charlie, received late last year, he conceived it as sort of a distraction from prostate cancer treatments then underway. Good idea! I had read about 75% then and finished it this month.

Structured as "50 Moments" per the title, but author recounts way way more episodes than that.  Enjoyable throughout; oddly enough one of my favorite segments was the story of Sandy Koufax's fourth no-hitter - it consisted of quoting Vin Scully's call of the final inning.  Lots of obvious and not-so-obvious items were included, variety with a few from overseas, minors, Negro leagues - mostly MLB of course, a mixture of content going back 100+ years. Maybe a little heavy on the recent stuff but that was OK.  

Baseball is indeed awesome. The kind of book I like. 

The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team (Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller, 2016)

Book club selection (via POC; session held July 17, 2016).

Authors are well-known baseball statistics guys, including stints with Baseball Prospectus.  A situation arises during one of their regular podcasts - almost like a dare - they agree to take on responsibilities with an independent league team, the Sonoma Stompers.  The idea was that they would have authority to select players and implement cutting-edge strategies based on statistical analysis.

That was the idea.  They find out that institutional inertia is powerful.

Interesting, useful; I pay lots of attention to baseball for so many years now (55 and counting), and had plenty of new insights based on reading this.

And our reading group has a couple guys who have lived the life, and had interesting things to say about all this.

Some thoughts:

1.  Sonoma is a town we know from vacations (just there in April as a matter of fact); team stadium just a couple blocks north of the town square; adds to the enjoyment of the book.

2.  Good job of explaining the gap between the independent leagues and affiliated ball - these players really are on the cusp, pretty much without exception.  In plenty of cases, deciding whether to play one more season for near-zero chance of advancing, or give up the dream and get a "real" job.

3.  The authors' interactions with the first manager (Feh) - very interesting - how  instincts, clubhouse experiences matter.  The stat guys won't anticipate that seemingly innocuous decisions will have a big morale effect, at least based on how players still tend to approach the game in 2016.

4.  Some interesting details about how the authors unearth players with unrecognized potential.

5.  But all in all, the authors had less control than one would expect based on the book blurbs.  Harder to initiate changes than they expected.

5.  One problem with the story:  sample size is too small to judge effectiveness.  One season, and a very short one at that.  The book publicity oversold what was going on here.  Which was a minor shame, since the book stands up quite well anyway.

6.  Unusual things - one of the players comes out; Jose Canseco signs for a short stint.

Baseball in the Garden of Eden - The Secret History of the Early Game (John Thorn, 2011)

Simon and Schuster book; gift from CCG (thanks!)  I hadn't even been aware that the book existed.

It was surprisingly interesting - an entirely new take, at least for me, on the origins of baseball.  I had last paid attention to this topic probably 40 years, give or take - when MLB observed the 100th anniversary of the Cincinnati professional team in 1969.  So I was familiar with the debunked status of Abner Doubleday, but otherwise had heard mostly about Alexander Cartwright (who also didn't "invent" anything, though at least was involved in rules development and the like).  This author goes into much more background.

Thoughts:

1.  I like how the author starts the book with the story of a commission that was charged with determining the origins of the game; its report, issued in 1910, identified Doubleday on flimsy evidence.  The author then pushes back in time to show other sources of the game, plus devotes time to explaining why Doubleday might have been entertained as a putative parent of the game.

2.  Interesting stories about "town ball," "old cat," base ball", etc.  Newspaper clippings or town records reference this going back to the 18th century (usually in reference to banning play near windows, or somesuch).  The "New York" version coming to the fore, the "Massachusetts" version fading.

3.  If one tries to think back to the origins of the game - quite an amazing chain of events - somehow it developed that people were willing to pay money to watch a game that was barely known.  The Civil War helped spread it.

4.  I liked how he links the development of formalized rules, statistics, etc. to gambling.  How the game was shaped in so many ways by those who would use it to make money (like there was anything wrong with that).  How the game sought to sell itself as a pure, amateur endeavor - similar to college sports, and just as big a joke.  19th century "amateur" players were busted for holding sinecures with boosters or owners - just last week one of the football factories was busted for the same practice.

5.  Lengthy, interesting discussions of the origins of the reserve clause, the notion of free agency, salary caps, designated hitters, prohibition of blacks, formation of rival leagues, etc.  Good run-up to how the American League finally survived to join the National League. 

6.  Getting back to the Doubleday fabrication - there is an odd connection to the Theosophist group - some weird cult-like organization that had some following in the 19th century and into the 20th.  Albert Spaulding was involved, as were his second wife and other figures tied to the sport.  Civil War figure Doubleday also was heavily involved with the Theosophists.  After surviving some rough patches, the powers that be in charge of baseball in 1910 were highly interested in proving an all-American, high-integrity, glossy paternity for the game.  Doubleday was a great candidate (plus attractive to the Theosophists).  The case for his paternity rested almost entirely on the recollections of an old man who was five years old when Doubleday invented the game in 1939 (i.e., the evidence was a joke).

Big Hair and Plastic Grass - A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s (Dan Epstein, 2010)

My brother Charlie sent this one along, it was published by St. Martin's Press (where Kate worked).

The subject matter and era are hard to beat for someone like me - I have more coherent memories of 1970s baseball than any other decade (including the current one). Plus we were collecting baseball cards in those days at a pretty fast clip, at least at the beginning of the decade. So this was highly enjoyed.

The author has a chapter for each year in the decade during which he summarizes the divisional races, playoff and World Series outcomes, major events during the year.

The far more interesting part of the book - though unfortunately just four of the chapters - is where he takes off on various themes: those round multi-purpose stadiums; AstroTurf; colorful uniforms; haircuts; stadium promotions (featuring, of course, dime beer night at Cleveland Muni and disco demolition at Comiskey Park).

A couple items of note:

I read that the wire "baskets" on the Wrigley Field fences were installed in 1970 following a bunch of drunk and/or stoned folks storming the field following an April game (supposedly a bunch of antiwar protesters in town). Also a discussion of how seedy the Wrigley area was in those days, much changed now.

Folks were distraught that Dave Kingman struck out 140 times in 1972 (he hit higher totals later in his career). You can tell baseball has changed, our own Diamondbacks feature a third baseman who has the three highest single-season strikeout totals of all time (topping out at 223). And they just gave him a contract extension last off-season.

Crazy times. It's difficult to imagine any current player involved in a wife-swap, pitching a game while on LSD, etc.