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The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told

5 stars (Every Chapter A True Joy) - I don't know if these are truly the greatest baseball stories ever told, but they are certainly entertaining. I am a baseball fan, but I'm not especially learned in baseball history. These stories, all by a different author, have deepened my love for the game and engendered appreciation for the men who play the game, past and present. I admit up front that I am a die-hard Dodger fan. The chapter by Vin Scully on Sandy Kofa'xs perfect game gave me goose bumps. I learned my love of baseball from my father, so the chapter by Doris Kearns Goodwin was especially meaningful (brought tears to my eyes). She tells how her father taught her to keep a score book for the Brooklyn Dodger games, then relay to him, play by play the entire game when he came home from work. She tells how, when the score was close toward the end of a game, she had to ask her mother to take notes while she left the room because the anxiety was just too much to bear. I, too, have had to do this. Of course, the first chapter with Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" is a classic whether you are a baseball fan or not. I enjoyed every page of this book and plan to pass it along to grandkids who also love the game of baseball. 5 stars (The Title Says It All) - The baseball stories that make up this book make it possible to call this book the the Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told. These stories have appeared in years past in the three Fireside books of baseball that are currently out of print. Since they are no longer available it would be advisable for you to strike while the iron is hot and buy this book. The book contains both fiction and non-fiction and certainly doesn't cover all the great stories that the Fireside books contain, but you can't argue with the thirty that make up this book. I would especially recommend this book for youngsters interested in baseball literature who weren't around to enjoy the Fireside books. 5 stars (An instant Hall o...
The Lyons Press :: Sports & Recreation & Baseball & Essays & Writings :: Sports & Recreation :: Sports :: Literary collections :: Baseball - Essays & Writings :: Baseball :: America :: The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told

 

The Natural

5 stars (The Game Beyond the Game) - I just re-read Malmud's truly great first novel, The Natural . I had first read it over 20 years ago. It was more moving to me now -- having experienced both success and failure in my life. It is a book about baseball and it captures the best elements of the game (I grew up loving and playing baseball both in NY and Denver) and Mickey Mantle was my boyhood hero, much like Superman -- the comic book hero. Compulsive baseball statiticians with no real appreciation of genuinely fine literature may grow impatient with some seeming discrepencies. However, the larger picture is that through poetic metaphor and very real tough dialogue Malamud captures the glory and the anguish of the elusive American dream. 2 stars (The Movie may be corny, but it's better than this) - I knew before beginning that Malamud's book was substantially different from the great film made from it. Specifically, I was aware that at the end Roy Hobbs would strike out instead of hitting that mammouth home run to win the pennant. I was, however, prepared to read the book, which I fully expected to enjoy. I was wrong. For one thing, and this I think should be obvious to any baseball fan of merit, it seems as though Mr.Malamud has decided to use flowery prose about mountains, women, and railroads to cover up a distinct lack of knowledge regarding the sport of baseball. At one point he refers to Pop Fisher having played for the Sox in the World Series "about forty years ago. It was the first series they'd been in in twenty years. Even if the book took place in 1952, the year it was published, that series sixty years ago would have been in 1892, eleven years before the first World Series. Another World Series is described as having pitted the Sox against the A's, when both of those teams were in the American League! There is much more to find disagreeable in this book, such as the illogicality of the plot. We go right from Hobbs being shot to 15 years la...
Farrar- Straus and Giroux :: Fiction & Literary :: Literature- Classics :: Literary :: Fiction - General :: Fiction :: Baseball stories :: Baseball players :: Baseball - General :: Kevin Baker :: B :: The Natural