Read up on the old ballgame

The boys of summer are back. The Angels are hot and the Dodgers

are.... well. But it’s that glorious time of year when the season

stretches out before us like the beckoning pure green of the diamond

and the field.

What is it about the sport of baseball that inspires writers to

such flights of fancy in so many books and magazines? Is it because

it’s called the thinking man’s game? Is it the years of tradition?

Whatever the reason, only golf begins to rival baseball in the number

of sports books published each year.

And what a wonderful selection of books there are for the baseball

fan: classics, new releases, profiles of games, teams, managers,

owners, players, commissioners, umpires, bat boys, ballparks,

uniforms, statistics, economics, quotations and humor, just for a

start. And we haven’t begun to think about the great fiction books

with baseball as their theme. Here are a few classics and newer books

that deserve the baseball fan’s attention as the new season

approaches.

“Baseball: A Literary Anthology” is the perfect place to start a

season of baseball reading. This terrific collection contains

everything from Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” to Don DeLillo’s

electrifying prose description of the 1951 Dodgers-Giants playoff

game from his novel, “Underworld.” In between you will find everyone

from A. Bartlett Giamatti to Stephen King and from the Rogers --

Angell and Kahn -- to Jacques Barzun (remember “Whoever wants to know

the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball ... “? This

collection contains the whole essay).

George Gmelch and J.J. Weiner wrote a most unusual but fun and

insightful book called “In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of

Baseball People.” The closest one comes to reading about a ballplayer

is Bernie Williams’ wife. The rest of the people profiled sell the

peanuts, man the press box, groom the field, train the sore muscles

or dress up as the Phillie Phanatic.

No baseball fan could let go unread the collection of essays by

the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, “Triumph and Tragedy in

Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball.” With his keen insight and

disarming humor, Gould’s topics range from Abner Doubleday to hitting

.400. It’s really enough of a summary to say that Gould was a

lifelong Yankee fan who held season tickets at Fenway Park.

If you prefer fiction to nonfiction, the library has the classics,

of course, like “The Natural,” “Shoeless Joe,” and “If I Never Get

Back.” But there are also a lot of little-known gems. Steve Kluger’s

“Last Days of Summer” consists solely of the hilarious correspondence

between a smart-alecky Jewish boy in Brooklyn during the World War II

and his idol, the all-star third baseman for the Giants. “The

Greatest Slump of All Time,” by David Carkeet, is an equally funny

and touching book about a winning club whose members all go into a

severe depression at the same time. Like all baseball books, it is a

metaphor, but also a great portrait of the inside workings of a team.

And lest we forget, there is local author Sherwood Kiraly’s

“California Rush” about a team of misfits, which culminates in the

funniest “big game” ever written.

Goodness, out of space and with so many more books to cover! We

haven’t even mentioned the great new baseball books due out in the

next few weeks like “27 Men Out: Baseball’s Perfect Games Through

History,” Tom Seaver’s “The Old Ballgame,” or “The Player: Christy

Mathewson, Baseball, and the American Century,” by Philip Seib. If

you are interested, just call or stop in at your local library for

these, and more, as the season begins.

* CHECK IT OUT is written by the staff of the Newport Beach Public

Library. This week’s column is by Sara Barnicle. All titles may be

reserved from home or office computers by accessing the catalog at

https://www.newport beachlibrary.org. For more information on the

Central Library or any of the branch locations, please contact the

Newport Beach Public Library at (949) 717-3800, option 2.