Baseball: A Literary Anthology

That's Roy Blount, Jr.'s précis of baseball (p. 552). Nicklas Dawidoff's "Baseball: A Literary Anthology" serves that up and a lot more.Here are a half-dozen reasons to buy and read this book.1. The editor's taste. Faced not with a mountain but an immense range of literature from which to select, Dawidoff's framing, structure, and selections are nearly impeccable. His introduction is just right: long enough to orient the reader, short enough to know when to stop. Each of his 70+ excerpts is prefaced with a brief, informative biography of its author. With Roger Angell he unapologetically awards extra innings to excerpts from each of Angell's four excellent books on the subject.2. Variety of genres: short stories, poems, promos, essays, excerpts from novels and memoirs, classic reporting, Broadway stage, adages (courtesy of Satchel Paige). You name it. Whatever you like to read, you'll find it here. That includes the introductory verse of Jack Norworth's "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Everybody knows the chorus. Who knows the verse?3. Variety of subjects. With the possible exception of hot dogs (which may be in here somewhere but I haven't yet discovered it), virtually every facet of the game is given its moment in the spotlight. Pitching. Batting. Fielding. Umpiring. Managing, Spectating. Baseball cards. Tactics. Bungles. Majesty. Corruption. Major league. Minor league. Little league. Profiles of the Greats and the More Obscures. Sports reporting. Little attention is given to free agency, which was both a blessing (the players' release from indentured servitude) and a curse (greed, which has always been the owners' prerogative but now exploited by the players, too).4. Variety of writers: You expect to open such a book and find Ring Lardner and Heywood Broun and Red Smith and Bernard Malamud. How about Stephen King? James Weldon Johnson? Marianne Moore? Robert Frost? Jacques Barzun? Tallulah Bankhead?5. Variety of tone: Reporting. Satire. Memory of failure. Humor. Exuberance. Tedium (artfully expressed). In other words: baseball.6. The one constant throughout these 715 pages: good, often exceptional, writing. Learn from master journalists how to craft a lede. "The Ruth is mighty and shall prevail" (Broun, p. 108). "Casey Stengel naked was a sight to remember" (Robert Creamer, p. 543). Perhaps the loveliest tribute to the game ever penned, "The Green Fields of the Mind," by A. Bartlett Giamatti (pp. 490–91). The opening: "It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart." Its ending: "I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun."The book is handsomely produced: the covers are designed to look like diagonally mowed green turf. The dust-jacket is simple: a white ball against a black background. The print is readable. The pages have been glued, not stitched, so handle with care over time.As I wrote of Lawrence Ritter's "The Glory of Their Times" (represented here by the words of Sam Crawford, pp. 61–80), so also here: I never grew up a fan and root for no home team and I love this book.

I recently purchased from Amazon, and now have read, three baseball anthologies: (1) Baseball, a hardbound Library of America anthology, edited by Nicholas Dawidoff; (2) Baseball's Best Short Stories, a quality paperback edited by Paul Staudohar, and (3) The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told, a quality paperback edited by Jeff Silverman. One need not be an informed fan of baseball, past or present, to treasure these stories. Baseball is the framework here; within are Americans intently observing, playing, and cherishing, America`s Game.¶ I reserve five stars for my tiptop favorites; the hardbound Library of America Anthology cited above I do especially applaud.

This was a required text for a class, however I would buy it anyway. It's a delight to read, varied in the chosen authors. I had no choice but to get it in hardcover, but I would buy it even then. Get it at the library if you have to, it's a great book.

Good product. Good Price.

Excellent Book. Very written and extensive collection!

Everything you would ever want to read about baseball!

A wonderful melding of good writing and baseball. Each selection produces an appreciation of the writer and the subject. Baseball and the Civil war are subjects that have inspired some of the best American literature, and this book is a good illustration

Excellent group pf baseball stories, essays and trivia.