top 100 baseball books

This list was created by members of the Baseball Book forum on facebook.

1) The Dickson Dictionary ()
2) Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era – Charles C. Alexander ()
3) Rogers Hornsby: A Biography – Charles Alexander ()
4) Five Seasons – Roger Angell ()
5) Late Innings – Roger Angell ()
6) Summer Game - Roger Angell ()
7) Eight Men Out - Eliot Asinof ()
8) 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball – Red Barber ()
9) The Original San Francisco Giants: The Giants of ’58 – Steve Bitker ()
10) Why Time Begins on Opening Day – Thomas Boswell ()
11) Ball four - Jim Bouton ()
12) I’m glad you didn’t take it personally – Jim Bouton ()
13) Can’t anybody here play this game?: the improbable saga of the New York Mets first year – Jimmy Breslin ()
14) Havana Heat – Darryl Brock ()
15) If I Never Get Back – Darryl Brock ()
16) Baseball and Philosophy: Thinking outside the batter’s Box ed – Eric Bronson ()
17) The Long Season – Jim Brosnan ()
18) Pennant Race – Jim Brosnan ()
19) Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston – Howard Bryant ()
20) Ed Delehanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball – Jerrod Casway ()
21) The Seventh Babe – Jerome Charyn ()
22) The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. – Robert Coover ()
23) Babe: the legend comes to life - Roger Creamer ()
24) Stengel – Robert Creamer ()
25) The Catcher was a Spy – Nicholas Dawidoff ()
26) Nice Guys finish Last, - Leo Durocher and Ed Linn ()
27) Luckiest Man – Jonathan Eig ()
28) Opening Day – Jonathan Eig ()
29) Fireside book series – Ed. Charles Einstein ()
30) Willie’s Time – Charles Einstein ()
31) New York City Baseball – Harvey Frommer ()
32) Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball – Harvey Frommer ()
33) Wrigleyville : a magical history tour of the Chicago Cubs - Peter Golenbock ()
34) Foul Balls: Five Years in the American League – Alison Gordon ()
35) The Yankees – Frank Grahm ()
36) The Celebrant – Eric Rolfe Greenberg ()
37) The Best Seat in Baseball But You Have to Stand – Lee Gutkind ()
38) Honus and Me – Dan Gutman ()
39) October 64 - David Halberstam ()
40) Summer of ’49 – David Halberstam ()
41) Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball – Donald Hall and Dock Ellis ()
42) Bang the Drum Slowly – Mark Harris ()
43) Lords of the Realm - John Helyer ()
44) My Giants - Russ Hodges ()
45) The Image of their Greatness – Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig ()
46) Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract – Bill James ()
47) Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame – Bill James ()
48) A False Spring – Patrick Jordan ()
49) The Boys of Summer - Roger Kahn ()
50) Good Enough to Dream – Roger Kahn ()
51) Dollar Sign on the Muscle – Kevin Kerrane ()
52) Iowa Baseball Confederacy – W.P. Kinsella ()
53) Shoeless Joe – W.P. Kinsella ()
54) The Baseball Uncyclopedia: A highly opinionated, myth-busting Guide to the Great American Game – Michael Kun and Howard Bloom ()
55) You Know Me Al – Ring Lardner ()
56) Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy – Jane Leavy ()
57) The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story – Peter Lefcourt ()
58) Me and DiMaggio – Christopher Lehamann-Haupt ()
59) Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game - Michael Lewis ()
60) Baseball as I have known it – Fred Lieb ()
61) The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball – Jonathan Fraser Light ()
62) Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman – Lee Lowerfish ()
63) Bronx Zoo – Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock ()
64) Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball – Norman Macht ()
65) The Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City – Jonathan Mahler ()
66) The Natural – Bernard Malamud ()
67) Pitching in a Pinch – Christy Mathewson ()
68) The Big Bam – Leigh Montville ()
69) Games of Inches Series – Peter Morris ()
70) Ban Johnson: Czar of Baseball – Gene Murdock ()
71) Crazy ’08 – Cait Murphy ()
72) We are the Ship: The story of negro league baseball - Kadir Nelson ()
73) The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Baseball – David Nemic ()
74) Nine Innings – Daniel Okrent ()
75) Lords of Baseball – Harold Parrot ()
76) Only the ball was white : a history of legendary black players and all-black professional teams - Robert Peterson ()
77) Curious Case of Sidd Finch – George Plimpton ()
78) Out of my League – George Plimpton ()
79) The American Diamond: a documentary of the game of baseball – Branch Rickey ()
80) Glory of their times - Lawrence S. Ritter ()
81) Great American Novel – Philip Roth ()
82) Blackguards and Red Stockings - William J. Ryczek ()
83) Victory Faust: The Man who Saved McGraw’s Giants – Gabrial Schechter ()
84) Baseball: the Early Years – Harold Seymour ()
85) Baseball: the golden age - Harold Seymour ()
86) Season in Hell – Mike Shropshire ()
87) Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball – Brad Snyder ()
88) Mickey Rawlings Series - Troy Soos ()
89) The Pitch That Killed – Mike Sowell ()
90) The Year They Called Off the World Series – Benton Stark ()
91) Cobb: A Biography - Al Stump ()
92) Diamond in the Bronx: Yankee Stadium and the Politics of New York – Neil Sullivan ()
93) Chief Bender’s Burden – Tom Swift ()
94) Baseball Natural: The Story of Eddie Waitkus – John Theodore ()
95) Chief Sunrise, John McGraw and Me - Timothy Tocher ()
96) Veeck as in Wreck – Bill Veeck and Ed Linn ()
97) American Baseball Series - David Voigt ()
98) Chrysanthemum and the bat – Robert Whiting ()
99) My turn at bat: the story of my life - Ted Williams ()
100) 1918 Babe Ruth and the World Champion Boston Red Sox – Allan Wood ()

Nice list, though I'd make room for "The Ticket Out: Darryly Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw" by Michael Sokolov

Looks like I have lots of catching up to do--a majority of these titles I haven't read, and some of them look very intriguing.

That said, I'll continue to beat the drum for a book I mentioned on another thread, Curt Flood's The Way it Is (sorry, tag doesn't seem to be working).

Nice to see that some fiction made the list, too, but frankly, Kinsella's Shoeless Joe is mighty saccharine. Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. is, in contrast, first-rate writing and often very funny. Too bad it's saddled with that clumsy title, which I've noticed puts some people off. Once I can get them to read the first chapter, though, they're hooked.

I'd add I had a hammer by Hank Aaron, especially for its eye-opening account of the racism he dealt with, not only in chasing Ruth but in being one of the first to integrate baseball's southern minor league system ... it could almost make one think that Jackie Robinson had it easy.

Also, I wonder why only two out of three of books in Harold Seymour's baseball history trilogy are there ... Baseball: The people's game is missing.

A couple lists of 50 by Larry Ritter and Society for American Baseball Research are at The Essential Baseball Library