Baseball book suggestions for Red Sox fans while on COVID-19 internment
By Rick McNair
The Boston Red Sox season and baseball are on hold, but there is still a book option. Here are a few recent reads I recommend.
Are you baseball depressed yet? Since our sports world is on hold, the alternative is going old school and reading about baseball. I am an avid reader who considers the Kindle, ATM, and coffee machine as man’s greatest technological accomplishments. Even before the virus, I would binge on reading with histories followed by science fiction and baseball. I will offer up some recent reads that I found enjoyable, enlightening, and informative.
The first, or batting leadoff, is two books by Dr. Rob Bauer and two books in conjunction with the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR). Both are on an era I have a crusade like addiction and that is baseball in the dead-ball era. The books are meticulously researched with every page providing a snippet of information that I did not know.
The books are “Outside the Lines of Gilded Age Baseball: Alcohol, Fitness, and Cheating in 1880s Baseball” and the second is “Outside the Lines of Gilded Age Baseball: Gambling, Umpires, and Racism in 1880s Baseball.”
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Both offer some insight into how things may not have changed that dramatically in almost 150 years. The beauty of both is you don’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy them as it is also a microcosm of America in the Gilded Age. I found the cheating portions especially resonant today with the sign-stealing scandal or the more things change the more they stay the same. Each page offered me a new revelation that I was unaware of. This is a refreshing look at baseball history that is loaded up anecdotes and player biographical information.
Who was the greatest of all baseball players? An old salt I knew decades ago started following baseball before the American League was even formed. He would rave about Honus Wagner and despite my fascination with dead-ball baseball, I have never read a book on Wagner. Now I have.
“Honus Wagner: A Biography” by Dennis DeValeria has fulfilled that lost portion in my baseball history. Wagner – long considered the best shortstop in baseball – was a SS by default. Wagner disliked the position but necessity forced it upon him. A classic local boy makes good from coal mining towns to the Pirates. A good section is devoted to the 1903 World Series with the Red Sox and that alone is worth the book.
Maybe Wagner was not the best? The American League had a challenger to that title in Nap Lajoie. Lajoie has near Boston local roots being born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island and playing town ball and industrial ball in what today is known as the South Coast region. The beauty of this book is it is a Twofer as described by the title: In “Ty Cobb’s Shadow: The Story of Napoleon Lajoie, Baseball’s First Superstar” by Gregory Rubano.
Lajoie was a baseball Horatio Alger story from the mills of Woonsocket to being idolized across the nation. The difference in Ty Cobb and Lajoie are stark reminders of two divergent personalities with Lajoie being highly respected by his peers as a player and person, but with Cobb it stopped with his playing abilities.
If Ted Williams hit right-handed he may have been called the second greatest hitter of all time. Cobb had a challenger for being intensely disliked and that is Rogers Hornsby as told by author supreme Charles Alexander (If his name is on a book, buy it!) in “Rogers Hornsby: A Biography.”
Hornsby alienated virtually all he came into contact with – players, family, children, owners, media. He was an intensely honest to a fault person and that often backfired. Hornsby, despite his incredible talent (lifetime .358), was traded or cut loose from managerial jobs throughout his life. Like Cobb, a highly talented and equally flawed individual. I knew a lot about Hornsby and now know a lot more and it ain’t pretty. Alexander does not attempt to smooth over the rough edges of Hornsby.
Next. Top Ten Red Sox players of the 1980s. dark
Alex Speier is well known to baseball and especially Red Sox fans. Speier does not disappoint with “Homegrown: How the Red Sox built a Champion From the Grond Up.” This is really in-depth stuff that takes you to the Caribbean and into the minor leagues. You get into the scouting, cross-checking, and development strategies from 2011 until the 2018 championship. A hint of Moneyball in this book.