🧲 Books like this
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong
Jonah Keri · back to the book
What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorSmart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball
Keith Law · 291 pages
"For decades, statistics such as batting average, saves recorded, and pitching won-lost records have been used to measure individual players' and teams' potential and success. But in the past fifteen years, a revolutionary new standard of measurement, sabermetrics, has been embraced by front offices in Major League Baseball and among fantasy baseball enthusiasts. But while sabermetrics is recogniz
The Bullpen Gospels: A Non-Prospect's Pursuit of the Major Leagues and the Meaning of Life
Dirk Hayhurst · 340 pages
From the humble heights of a Class-A pitcher's mound to the deflating lows of sleeping on his gun-toting grandmother's air mattress, veteran reliever Dirk Hayhurst steps out of the bullpen to deliver the best pitch of his career—a raw, unflinching and surprisingly moving account of his life in the minors.I enjoyed the visualizations, maybe a little too much, and would stop only when I felt I'd cen
Ball Four
Jim Bouton · 472 pages
Twentieth-anniversary edition of a baseball classic, with a new epilogue by Jim Bouton. When first published in 1970, Ball Four stunned the sports world. The commissioner, executives, and players were shocked. Sportswriters called author Jim Bouton a traitor and "social leper." Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force him to declare the book untrue. Fans, however, loved the book. And seriou
The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter
Ian O'Connor · 416 pages
O'Connor draws on unique access to Derek Jeter and more than 200 new interviews to reveal how a biracial kid from Michigan became New York's most beloved sports figure and the face of the steroid-free athlete.
Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero
Leigh Montville · 560 pages
Summer of '49
David Halberstam · 336 pages
Chronicles the 1949 baseball season, which marked the beginning of the rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig
Jonathan Eig · 432 pages
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It
Lawrence S. Ritter · 320 pages
Personal narratives by Rube Marquard, Tommy Leach, Davy Jones, Sam Crawford, Jimmy Austin, Fred Snodgrass, Stanley Coveleski, Al Bridwell, Harry Hooper, Joe Wood, Chief Meyers, Hans Lobert, Rube Bressler, Edd Roush, Bill Wambsganss, Sam Jones, Bob O'Farrell, Lefty O'Doul, Goose Goslin, Willie Kamm, Heinie Groh, and Paul Waner.
The Bad Guys Won! A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo-chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform--and Maybe the Best
Jeff Pearlman · 304 pages
Once upon a time, twenty-four grown men would play baseball together, eat together, carouse together, and brawl together. Alas, those hard-partying warriors have been replaced by GameBoy-obsessed, laptop-carrying, corporate soldiers who would rather punch a clock than a drinking buddy. But it wasn't always this way ...In The Bad Guys Won, award-winning former Sports Illustrated baseball writer Jef
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life
Richard Ben Cramer · 553 pages
"In this biography, Richard Ben Cramer presents a stunning, often shocking portrait of the hero nobody knew. It is a story that sweeps through the twentieth century, bringing to light along the way not just America's national game, but her movie stars, mobsters, pols, writers...the birth (and the price) of modern national celebrity.". "This is the story Joe DiMaggio never wanted to tell - and nev
The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America
Joe Posnanski · 276 pages
Documents the author's cross-country travels at the side of Negro Leagues champion Buck O'Neil, a journey during which the pair sought to recapture their love of the game, remembered O'Neil's history-making career, and explored the numerous challenges that the sport has overcome.
Fantasyland: True Tales from America's Most Compulsive Fantasy Baseball League
Sam Walker · 361 pages
Every spring, millions of Americans prepare to take part in one of the oddest, most obsessive, and most engrossing rituals in the sports pantheon: Rotisserie baseball, a fantasy game where armchair fans match wits by building their own teams. In 2004, Sam Walker, a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal, decided to explore this phenomenon by talking his way into Tout Wars, a league reserved
Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball
John Feinstein · 376 pages
"A fascinating account of the mysterious proving ground of America's national pastime, pulling back the veil on the minor leagues of baseball."--
Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game
Dan Barry · 340 pages
From Pulitzer Prize-winning "New York Times" columnist Dan Barry comes the beautifully recounted story of the longest game in baseball history--a tale celebrating not only the robust intensity of baseball, but the aspirational ideal epitomized by the hard-fighting players of the minor leagues.
You Gotta Have Wa
Robert Whiting · 339 pages
A hilarious, informative, and riveting account of Japanese baseball and the cultural clashes that ensued when Americans began playing there professionally. In Japan, baseball is a way of life. It is a philosophy. It is besuboru. Its most important element is wa—group harmony—embodied in the proverb "The nail that sticks up shall be hammered down." In this witty and incisive book, Robert Whiting
A Band of Misfits: Tales of the 2010 San Francisco Giants
Andrew Baggarly
Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and "The Worst Baseball Team in History" - The 1973-1975 Texas Rangers
Mike Shropshire · 250 pages
“Even before the start of spring training, Herzog had said, ‘If Rich Billings is the starting catcher again, we’re in deep trouble.’ When that evaluation was passed along to Billings, he simply nodded and said, ‘Whitey, obviously, has seen me play.’” In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, not realizing that the Rangers
I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies: Inside the Game We All Love
Tim Kurkjian · 244 pages
"ESPN baseball commentator Tim Kurkjian is fascinated by sacrifice flies. In fact, he is fascinated by so many aspects of baseball that he's written a book to show baseball fans where this fascination comes from and how they, too, can find it. In the aftermath of the Steroid Era that stained the game, at a time when so many players are so rich and therefore have a sense of entitlement that they ha
The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball's Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses
Addy Baird · 304 pages
Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series
Eliot Asinof · 302 pages
Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team
Audrey Vernick · 39 pages
Documents the story of the Baseball Hall of Fame honorees, tracing how the Acerra family of New Jersey formed their own semi-pro baseball team in the 1930s and became the longest-running all-brother team in history.
Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America's Pastime
Mark Frost
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy
Jane Leavy · 282 pages
In an era when too many heroes have been toppled from too many pedestals, Sandy Koufax stands apart and alone, a legend who declined his own celebrity. As a pitcher, he was sublime, the ace of baseball lore. As a human being, he aspired to be the one thing his talent and his fame wouldn't allow: a regular guy. A Brooklyn kid, he was the product of the sedate and modest fifties who came to define a

