BASEBALL HISTORY BOOKS

The following is a sampling of books that cover significant events in baseball history such as Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer or Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out. Some of these books give us a glimpse into particular eras such as the development and influx of Asian ballplayers discussed in Robert Whiting's The Samurai Way of Baseball. Other books give us additional insight into lesser known yet thrilling pennant races such as Cait Murphy's Crazy '08. If you love reading about baseball history, hopefully you'll find something here that piques your interest and becomes good ballpark, evening or weekend reading.

Buy It Now	Asian Pacific Americans and Baseball: A History by Joel S. Franks With the rise of stars such as Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, and now Daisuke Matsuzaka, fans today can easily name players from the island country of Japan. Less widely known is that baseball has long been played on other Pacific islands, in pre-statehood Hawaii, for instance, and in Guam, Samoa and the Philippines. For the multiethnic peoples of these U.S. possessions, the learning of baseball was actively encouraged, some would argue as a means to an unabashedly colonialist end. As early as the deadball era, Pacific Islanders competed against each other and against mainlanders on the diamond, with teams like the Hawaiian Travelers barnstorming the States, winning more than they lost against college, semi-pro, and even professional nines. For those who moved to the mainland, baseball eased the transition, helping Asian Pacific Americans create a sense of community and purpose, cross cultural borders, and--for a few--achieve fame.
Buy It Now	Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball by Robert K. Fitts Often called the Nisei Jackie Robinson, Wally Yonamine was the first ethnic Japanese to play professional football in the United States and the first American to play professional baseball in Japan after World War II. In both environments, the young Hawaiian had to adapt to unfamiliar cultures and overcome prejudice against his Japanese-American ancestry.
Buy It Now	The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and the Transformation of Our National Pastime by Robert Whiting In this extraordinary work, bestselling author Bob Whiting examines how Japanese baseball players are impacting and re-inventing America's major leagues. Matsui....Nomo....Sasaki....Ichiro.... the so-called American 'National Pastime' has developed a decidedly Japanese flair. Indeed, in this year'sAll-Star game, two of the starting American League outfielders were from Japan. And for the third straight year, Ichiro-the fleet-footed Seattle Mariner-received more votes for the All-Star game than any other player in the game today. Some 15 years ago, in the bestseller You Gotta Have Wa, Robert Whiting examined how former American major league ballplayers tried to cope with a different culture while playing pro ball in Japan. Now, in THE MEANING OF ICHIRO, Whiting reverses his field and reveals how select Japanese stars have come across the Pacific to play in the big leagues. Not only have these Japanese imports had to deal with the American way of life, but they have individually changed the game in a dramatic fashion. Much more than a baseball book, The Meaning of Ichiro presents the merging of two very distinct cultures-and reveals how this traditional game has become a metaphor for the globalization of two different societies.
Buy It Now	The Samurai Way of Baseball by Robert Whiting The bestselling author of the baseball classic You Gotta Have Wa delivers a fascinating look at how Japanese ballplayers are influencing and reinventing America's major leagues. Ichiro....Nomo....Sasaki....Hasegawa....Matsui....one by one they have come to America and made their mark-not as novelty items but as incredibly gifted ballplayers whose skills and styles have defied critics and earned the admiration of millions of fans. Led by the charismatic right fielder for the Seattle Mariners, Ichiro Suzuki, whom many refer to as baseball's best all-around player, this new wave of athlete is the tip of a fascinating iceberg: a deep and very different tradition of baseball the Japanese way. Grandly entertaining and deeply illuminating, Robert Whiting has created a classic book about baseball, business, and stardom-in a sports world that is changing before our very eyes.
Buy It Now	From Asahi to Zebras by Ralph M. Pearce This book chronicles Japanese American baseball teams that developed in Northern California beginning in the early 1900's. Baseball at that time enjoyed a great popularity and received much less competition from other sports or forms of entertainment available today. Whether the Issei became acquainted with the game in Japan or after their arrival to the United States, these first-generation Japanese immigrants came to be known for their insatiable love of baseball. This love would push them to organize and supply teams, build ballparks at home and in relocation camps, and transport teams across the Pacific and back. It would also, perhaps unknowingly, narrow gaps between generations and ease acceptance into a foreign culture.
Buy It Now	Through a Diamond by Kerry Yo Nakagawa Through a Diamond is far more than a history of the experience of Japanese American baseball. It is a compassionate description of the immigrant experience of the Japanese people as seen through the prism of America's grand old game of baseball.
Buy It Now	The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster, and told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and love.
Buy It Now	The Long Ball by Tom Adelman The 1975 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox is generally considered to be the best of all time, and baseball historians often rank its sixth game as the greatest single game ever played. In this exuberantly praised bestseller, Tom Adelman tells the story of the season that led up to that classic series, and then delivers the inside pitch on those amazing seven games.
Buy It Now	Once They Were Angels by Rob Goldman Once They Were Angels details the baseball team's rich 44-year history through fresh perspectives from the players who defined the franchise: Bo Belinsky, Jim Fregosi, Nolan Ryan, Rod Carew, Don Baylor, Reggie Jackson, Jim Abbott and many others. The book ends where it begins ? with Scott Spiezio reliving his dramatic home run in the seventh inning of Game Six of the 2002 World Series. Like any great franchise worth remembering, Once They Were Angels will form an indelible stamp in the hearts and minds of Angels fans both young and old.
Buy It Now	9 Innings by Daniel Okrent You'll never watch baseball the same way again. A timeless baseball classic and a must read for any fan worthy of the name, Nine Innings dissects a single baseball game played in June 1982 -- inning by inning, play by play. Daniel Okrent, a seasoned writer and lifelong fan, chose as his subject a Milwaukee Brewers-Baltimore Orioles matchup, though it could have been any game, because, as Okrent reveals, the essence of baseball, no matter where or when it's played, has been and will always be the same. In this particular moment of baseball history you will discover myriad aspects of the sport that are crucial to its nature but so often invisible to the fans -- the hidden language of catchers' signals, the physiology of pitching, the balance sheet of a club owner, the gait of a player stepping up to the plate. With the purity of heart and unwavering attention to detail that characterize our national pastime, Okrent goes straight to the core of the world's greatest game. You'll never watch baseball the same way again.
Buy It Now	Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof The headlines proclaimed the 1919 fix of the World Series and attempted cover-up as "the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America!" First published in 1963, Eight Men Out has become a timeless classic. Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the Series in Cincinnati. Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to the Series, only to be rocked by the scandal. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this is a compelling slice of American history in the aftermath of World War I and at the cusp of the Roaring Twenties.
Buy It Now	Crazy '08 by Cait Murphy Crazy '08 recounts the 1908 season—the year when Peerless Leader Frank Chance's men went toe to toe to toe with John McGraw and Christy Mathewson's New York Giants and Honus Wagner's Pittsburgh Pirates in the greatest pennant race the National League has ever seen. The American League has its own three-cornered pennant fight, and players like Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and the egregiously crooked Hal Chase ensured that the junior circuit had its moments. But it was the National League's—and the Cubs'—year.