lindapanzo's Spring Training Read

Welcome!!

For the seventh straight year, I'll be doing my (now) annual Spring Training Read. Once the Super Bowl is over, this baseball fan's thoughts turn to Spring Training, which will start in just a few short days. Then, on March 28th, the Chicago Cubs will start their regular season.

This is the place to talk about the baseball books you're planning to read, or else just talk about baseball.

This year, for the 6 weeks of Spring Training, I'm once again aiming to read 6 baseball books. Besides the Kinsella book, which is fiction, most of the others are biographies, though the Epstein book is baseball history.

Some initial thoughts:

--The Big Fella by Jane Leavy
--Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero by Leigh Montville
--Let's Play Two: The Life and Times of Ernie Banks by Doug Wilson
--Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ‘76 by Dan Epstein
--Let's Play Two: Poems About Baseball--finished on 3/2/19
--A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle by Randy Roberts

I've added this thread to the group wiki.

Interesting idea Linda.

While I probably won't be reading any baseball specific books myself, I'll throw out a couple ideas (but since this is the 7th year you've done this, you've probably already read these)

For once my obsessive need to TAG things has paid off, here's the 4 books I've read and tagged with BASEBALL.

Summerland - Michael Chabon
The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
Moneyball - Michael Lewis
Ironweed - William Kennedy. Read this many years ago and have no memory of its association with baseball. I think the main character was an ex-baseball player.

>3 drneutron: Thanks!!

>4 mahsdad: Some good ideas. Thanks. I rarely read baseball fiction but was thinking of one or two this year. Couldn't believe I hadn't read the Kinsella book, for instance.

I've got a few recent baseball bios in mind but am hoping to read what I already have on hand.

I've never read any Kinsella. I should read Shoeless Joe as Field of Dreams is one of my favorite movies. Or least one of those movies that I'll watch whenever it is on.

>6 mahsdad: Field of Dreams is probably my all-time favorite movie. I notice that Fathom Events (not sure if that's the exact name) will have a 30th anniversary showing on the big screen this year.

Between Kindle and print, I've probably got at least 20 baseball books. I also follow along on new baseball books with Ron Kaplan's Baseball Books blog. http://www.ronkaplansbaseballbookshelf.com/

I am going to check out my local library and see what I can squeeze in this month. I cannot wait for baseball season to begin. I have on my Cubs Championship sweat shirt at the moment :)

For TIOLI, Joyce is reading The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant - Douglass Wallop, which is what the musical Damn Yankees was based on, so I'll join her on that. I've got an ILL request in.

I've been a big negligent as to reading my planned baseball books but, after finishing the mystery I was wrapped up in, I've now turned to W.P. Kinsella's The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, a novel involving my beloved Chicago Cubs.

I finished Baseball: 100 Classic Moments in the History of the Game today. I would recommend this one - I gave it 4 stars - as it covers highlights of baseball in the years 1900-2000. The essays are not in-depth, but they cover a wide variety of highlights and does not stint on coverage of the early years.

>11 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia. I'll have to look for that one. My baseball reads so far this Spring Training have been negligible, though I'm about to get going on the book on which the play Damn Yankees is based.