Baseball Books on the Point with Mindy Todd
What a delight it was this morning to hear Peter Abrahams talk about baseball! Mindy and I were both impressed by the depth of his knowledge and his love of the game. If you missed the show this morning, listen in tonight at 7 PM on WCAI, 90.1 or listen online. Thanks also to all of our listeners who called in with their favorite baseball books! I’m convinced we could easily do twelve months of baseball shows, the literature is so rich.
Peter’s Picks
The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
The Wrong Stuff by Bill Lee
Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinov
The Catcher Was a Spy by Michael Dawidoff
Sandy Koufax by Jane Leavy
A Whole Different Ball Game by Marvin Miller
Where Nobody Knows Your Name by John Feinstein
Pedro by Pedro Martinez with Michael Silverman
Ball Four by Jim Bouton
Jill’s Picks
Baseball Trick by Scott Corbett
Bats at the Ballgame by Brian Lies
Take Me Out to the Yakyu by Aaron Meshon
Girl Wonder: a baseball story in nine innings by Deborah Hopkinson with pictures by Terry Widener
Baseball: a literary anthology edited by Nicholas Dawidoff
“American Fiction” in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, vol. 4
You Know Me Al by Ring W. Lardner
The Fan by Peter Abrahams
The Last Best League by Jim Collins
The Top of His Game: the best sportswriting of W. C. Heinz, edited by Bill Littlefield
Baseball Haiku: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball edited with translations by Cor van den Heuvel & Nanae Tamura
Listener’s Picks
Anything by Roger Angell, especially Season Ticket and Once More Around the Park: a baseball reader
The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams and John Underwood
Sixty Feet, Six Inches by Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson
Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Dinosaur Bob and his Adventures with the Family Lazardo by William Joyce
High Heat: the secret history of the fast ball by Tim Wendel
Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: a lifelong passion for baseball by Stephen Jay Gould
Bottom of the 33rd: hope, redemption, and baseball’s longest game by Dan Barry
Independence Day by Richard Ford. This novel is part of a series of novels about Frank Bascombe.
1. The Sportswriter (Vintage, 1986)
Once promising fiction writer turned sports reporter Frank Bascombe tries to avoid coping with his son’s death by distracting himself with extramarital affairs.
2. Independence Day (Knopf, 1995)
Frank, divorced and working in real estate, takes his difficult teenage son on a trip to two sports halls of fame during the Fourth of July weekend.
3. The Lay of the Land (Knopf, 2006)
Frank’s second marriage, isn’t working out. Sally abandons Frank for her thought-to-be-dead first husband, Frank undergoes treatment for prostate cancer. This novel’s action unfolds during the week before Thanksgiving 2000.
4. Let Me Be Frank With You (Ecco, 2014)
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Frank Bascombe travels to the site of his former home on the shore, visits his ex-wife, who is suffering with Parkinson’s, and meets a dying former friend.