“What are the best books about Baseball?” We looked at 337 of the top Baseball books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

The top 60 titles, all appearing on 2 or more “Best Baseball” book lists, are ranked below by how many lists they appear on. The remaining 250+ titles, as well as the lists we used are in alphabetical order at the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

Top 60 Best Baseball Books Of All-time

60 .) Anybody’s Game: Kathryn Johnston, the First Girl to Play Little League Baseball by Heather Lang

Lists It Appears On:

• Kenton Library
• We Are Teachers

In 1950, Kathryn Johnston wanted to play Little League, but an unwritten rule kept girls from trying out. So she cut off her hair and tried out as a boy under the nickname Tubby. She made the team and changed Little League forever. A great story about what it means to want to do something so badly you re willing to break the rules to do it and how breaking the rules can lead to change.

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59 .) Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong by Jonah Keri

Lists It Appears On:

• Flashlight Worthy Books
• Goodreads

In the numbers-obsessed sport of baseball, statistics don’t merely record what players, managers, and owners have done. Properly understood, they can tell us how the teams we root for could employ better strategies, put more effective players on the field, and win more games. The revolution in baseball statistics that began in the 1970s is a controversial subject that professionals and fans alike argue over without end. Despite this fundamental change in the way we watch and understand the sport, no one has written the book that reveals, across every area of strategy and management, how the best practitioners of statistical analysis in baseball-people like Bill James, Billy Beane, and Theo Epstein-think about numbers and the game. Baseball Between the Numbers is that book. In separate chapters covering every aspect of the game, from hitting, pitching, and fielding to roster construction and the scouting and drafting of players, the experts at Baseball Prospectus examine the subtle, hidden aspects of the game, bring them out into the open, and show us how our favorite teams could win more games. This is a book that every fan, every follower of sports radio, every fantasy player, every coach, and every player, at every level, can learn from and enjoy.

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58 .) Baseball When the Grass Was Real: Baseball From the Twenties to the Forties Told by the Men Who Played It

Lists It Appears On:

• Bat and Ball Game
• NY Times

Donald Honig crossed the country to meet and interview former big-league ball players. They shared their memories with him and the result is a book packed with nostalgia, statistics, action, revelations—an extraordinary oral history of baseball in the halcyon days beween the two world wars. Babe Ruth, Lefty Grove, Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Dizzy Dean, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, and many others are brought to life through the recollections of Wes Ferrell, Charlie Gehringer, Elbie Fletcher, Bucky Waters, Billy Herman, Cool Papa Bell, Spud Chandler, Pete Reiser, and a host of others. Those were the days when the grass was real, salaries were modest, Bob Feller was America’s most famous seventeen-year-old, and idealism was in full swing. “Baseball builds your pride,” said pitcher Wes Ferrell, who played it in order “to be a better guy.”

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57 .) Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy by Jules Tygiel

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Sporting News

In 1997 the American people will celebrate with great fanfare and publicity the fiftieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s explosive entrance into major league baseball. Robinson has become a national icon, his name a virtual synonym for pathbreaker. Indeed, much has transpired between this young African-American’s first bold strides around the baseball diamonds of a segregated America and General Manager Bob Watson’s pride in assembling 1996 World Champion New York Yankees. Recognizing this monumental event in America’s continuing struggle for integration, Jules Tygiel has expanded his highly acclaimed Baseball’s Great Experiment. In a new afterword, he addresses the mythology surrounding Robinson’s achievements, his overall effect on baseball and other sports, and the enduring legacy Robinson has left for African Americans and American society. In this gripping account of one of the most important steps in the history of American desegregation, Tygiel tells the story of Jackie Robinson’s crossing of baseball’s color line. Examining the social and historical context of Robinson’s introduction into white organized baseball, both on and off the field, Tygiel also tells the often neglected stories of other African-American players–such as Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron–who helped transform our national pastime into an integrated game.

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56 .) Bloomer Girls: Women Baseball Pioneers by Debra A. Shattuck

Lists It Appears On:

• Bustle
• Sports Collectors Digest

Disapproving scolds. Sexist condescension. Odd theories about the effect of exercise on reproductive organs. Though baseball began as a gender-neutral sport, girls and women of the nineteenth century faced many obstacles on their way to the diamond. Yet all-female nines took the field everywhere. Debra A. Shattuck pulls from newspaper accounts and hard-to-find club archives to reconstruct a forgotten era in baseball history. Her fascinating social history tracks women players who organized baseball clubs for their own enjoyment and found roster spots on men’s teams. Entrepreneurs, meanwhile, packaged women’s teams as entertainment, organizing leagues and barnstorming tours. If the women faced financial exploitation and indignities like playing against men in women’s clothing, they and countless ballplayers like them nonetheless staked a claim to the nascent national pastime. Shattuck explores how the determination to take their turn at bat thrust female players into narratives of the women’s rights movement and transformed perceptions of women’s physical and mental capacity.

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55 .) Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose, and Other Reflections on Baseball by George F. Will

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• NY Times

In this New York Times bestseller, Pulitzer Prize-winning author George F. Will returns to baseball with more than seventy finely honed pieces about the sometimes recondite, sometimes frustrating, yet always passionately felt national pastime. Here are Will’s eulogy for the late Curt Flood (“Dred Scott in Spikes”), Will on Ted Williams (“When Ted Williams retired in 1960, a sportswriter said that Boston knew how Britain felt when it lost India. Indeed, Britain felt diminished, but also a bit relieved”), and Will on his own baseball career (“I was a very late draft choice of the Mittendorf Funeral Home Panthers. Our color was black”). Here are subjects ranging from the author’s 1977 purchase of a single share of stock in the Chicago Cubs to the memorable 1998 season, which is discussed in an all-new essay.

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54 .) Cardboard Gods by Josh Wilker

Lists It Appears On:

• Mens Journal
• Sporting News

Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh’s classic observations about the central artifacts from his life: the baseball cards themselves. Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of journeyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening of the powerful childhood bond with his older brother; he considers the doomed utopian back-to-the-land dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop of inimitable 1970s baseball figures such as “Designated Pinch Runner” Herb Washington and Mark “The Bird” Fidrych.

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53 .) Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character by Marty Appel

Lists It Appears On:

• Barnes & Noble
• Sports Collectors Digest

There was nobody like Casey before him, and no one like him since. For more than fifty years, Casey Stengel lived baseball, first as a player (he was the only person in history to play for all the New York teams the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, and Mets), and then as a manager (for the Yankees and Mets, among others).

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52 .) Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s by Jason Turbow

Lists It Appears On:

• SF Chronicle
• Sports Collectors Digest

The Oakland A’s of the early 1970s were the most transformative team in baseball history. Never before had an entire organization so collectively traumatized baseball’s establishment with its outlandish behavior and business decisions, let alone an indisputably winning record: five consecutive division titles and three straight championships. The drama that played out on the field was exceeded only by the drama in the clubhouse and front office. But those A’s, with their garish uniforms and outlandish facial hair, redefined the game for coming generations.

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51 .) Game Time: A Baseball Companion by Roger Angell

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• NY Times

Roger Angell has been writing about baseball for more than forty years . . . and for my money he’s the best there is at it,” says novelist Richard Ford in his introduction to Game Time. Angell’s famous explorations of the summer game are built on acute observation and joyful participation, conveyed in a prose style as admired and envied as Ted Williams’s swing. Angell on Fenway Park in September, on Bob Gibson brooding in retirement, on Tom Seaver in mid-windup, on the abysmal early and recent Mets, on a scout at work in backcountry Kentucky, on Pete Rose and Willie Mays and Pedro Martinez, on the astounding Barry Bonds at Pac Bell Park, and more, carry us through the arc of the season with refreshed understanding and pleasure. This collection represents Angell’s best writings, from spring training in 1962 to the explosive World Series of 2002.

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50 .) Heat: My Life on and Off the Diamond

Lists It Appears On:

• NY Times
• Read Brightly

Dwight Gooden’s early years with the New York Mets were golden — he was the youngest winner of the Cy Young Award in baseball history and led the New York Mets to one of the most dramatic World Series victories in 1986. Dwight Gooden — a.k.a. Doc or simply Dr. K — had a fastball that hitters just could not beat. But Gooden’s fall was as quick and dramatic as his rise. By 1994 he had twice been suspended from the league for drug abuse, plunging him into a vicious cycle that threatened his career and, ultimately, his life.Today, Dwight Gooden is back in the big leagues. Heat captures Gooden’s poignant road to recovery, and how it culminated in his second World Series ring with the New York Yankees in 1996, and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Yankees club. During his fourteen years in the big leagues, Dwight Gooden has seen plenty. Heat brings to life the glorious world championship baseball through the eyes of one of its most popular and talented stars.

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49 .) Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants by Robert F. Garratt

Lists It Appears On:

• SF Chronicle
• Sports Collectors Digest

In 1957 Horace Stoneham took his Giants of New York baseball team and headed west, starting a gold rush with bats and balls rather than pans and mines. But San Francisco already had a team, the Seals of the Pacific Coast League, and West Coast fans did not immediately embrace the newcomers.

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48 .) I Got It! by David Wiesner

Lists It Appears On:

• Kenton Library
• We Are Teachers

David Wiesner presents a near-wordless account of the most suspenseful, nerve-wracking few seconds in a baseball game. The few seconds after the ball leaves the bat can be infinitely long. For this eager young outfielder, there’s plenty of time to envision the increasingly fantastic and funny situations that might interfere with making the catch. Summoning determination and courage, he overcomes the imaginary obstacles and turns them into a springboard for success.

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47 .) Jackie Robinson: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• NY Times

The extraordinary life of Jackie Robinson is illuminated as never before in this full-scale biography by Arnold Rampersad, who was chosen by Jack’s widow, Rachel, to tell her husband’s story, and was given unprecedented access to his private papers. We are brought closer than we have ever been to the great ballplayer, a man of courage and quality who became a pivotal figure in the areas of race and civil rights. Born in the rural South, the son of a sharecropper, Robinson was reared in southern California. We see him blossom there as a student-athlete as he struggled against poverty and racism to uphold the beliefs instilled in him by his mother–faith in family, education, America, and God. We follow Robinson through World War II, when, in the first wave of racial integration in the armed forces, he was commissioned as an officer, then court-martialed after refusing to move to the back of a bus. After he plays in the Negro National League, we watch the opening of an all-American drama as, late in 1945, Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers recognized Jack as the right player to break baseball’s color barrier–and the game was forever changed. Jack’s never-before-published letters open up his relationship with his family, especially his wife, Rachel, whom he married just as his perilous venture of integrating baseball began. Her memories are a major resource of the narrative as we learn about the severe harassment Robinson endured from teammates and opponents alike; about death threats and exclusion; about joy and remarkable success.

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46 .) Lefty O’Doul: Baseball’s Forgotten Ambassador by Dennis Snelling

Lists It Appears On:

• SF Chronicle
• Sports Collectors Digest

From San Francisco to the Ginza in Tokyo, Lefty O’Doul relates the untold story of one of baseball’s greatest hitters, most colorful characters, and the unofficial father of professional baseball in Japan.

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45 .) Lou: 50 Years of Kicking Dirt, Playing Hard, and Winning Big in the Sweet Spot of Baseball by Lou Piniella with Bill Madden.

Lists It Appears On:

• Barnes & Noble
• Sports Collectors Digest

In this candid, revealing, and entertaining memoir, the beloved New York Yankee legend looks back over his nearly fifty-year career as a player and a manager, sharing insights and stories about some of his most memorable moments and some of the biggest names in Major League Baseball.

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44 .) Making My Pitch: A Woman’s Baseball Odyssey by Ila Jane Borders

Lists It Appears On:

• Bustle
• Sports Collectors Digest

Making My Pitch tells the story of Ila Jane Borders, who despite formidable obstacles became a Little League prodigy, MVP of her otherwise all-male middle school and high school teams, the first woman awarded a baseball scholarship, and the first to pitch and win a complete men’s collegiate game. After Mike Veeck signed Borders in May 1997 to pitch for his St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League, she accomplished what no woman had done since the Negro Leagues era: play men’s professional baseball. Borders played four professional seasons and in 1998 became the first woman in the modern era to win a professional ball game. Borders had to find ways to fit in with her teammates, reassure their wives and girlfriends, work with the media, and fend off groupies. But these weren’t the toughest challenges. She had a troubled family life, a difficult adolescence as she struggled with her sexual orientation, and an emotionally fraught college experience as a closeted gay athlete at a Christian university. Making My Pitch shows what it’s like to be the only woman on the team bus, in the clubhouse, and on the field.

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43 .) My Cubs: A Love Story by Scott Simon.

Lists It Appears On:

• IPPL
• Sports Collectors Digest

NPR’s Scott Simon’s personal, heartfelt reflections on his beloved Chicago Cubs, replete with club lore, memorable anecdotes, frenetic fandom and wise and adoring intimacy that have made the world champion Cubbies baseball’s most tortured–and now triumphant–franchise. Heartbreak and hope. Charmed and haunted. My Cubs is Scott Simon’s love letter to his Chicago Cubs, World Series winners for the first time in over a century. Replete with personal reflections, club lore, memorable anecdotes, and tales of frenetic fandom, My Cubs recounts the franchise’s pivotal moments with the wise and adoring intimacy of a long-suffering devotee and Chicago native. Simon illustrates how the condition of “Cubness” has defined the life of so many Chicagoans and how the team’s fortunes became intertwined with the aspirations of its faithful. With the curse finally broken on November 2, 2016, My Cubs is the perfect portrayal of paradise lost and found.

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42 .) Papi: My Story by David Ortiz with Michael Holley.

Lists It Appears On:

• Barnes & Noble
• Sports Collectors Digest

An entertaining, unfiltered memoir by one of the game’s greatest, most clutch sluggers and beloved personalities David “Big Papi” Ortiz is a baseball icon and one of the most popular figures ever to play the game. As a key part of the Boston Red Sox for 14 years, David has helped the team win 3 World Series, bringing back a storied franchise from “never wins” to “always wins.” He helped them upend the doubts, the naysayers, the nonbelievers and captured the imagination of millions of fans along the way, as he launched balls into the stands again, and again, and again. He made Boston and the Red Sox his home, his place of work, and his legacy. As he put it: This is our f*ing city. Now, looking back at the end of his legendary career, Ortiz opens up fully for the first time about his last two decades in the game. Unhindered by political correctness, Ortiz talks colorfully about his journey, from his poor upbringing in the Dominican Republic to when the expansion Florida Marlins passed up a chance to sign him due to what was essentially tennis elbow. He recalls his days in Peoria, Arizona, his first time in the United States; tense exchanges with Twins manager Tom Kelly in Minnesota; and his arrival in Boston. Readers go behind the scenes for the many milestones of his Red Sox career— from the huge disappointment of the Red Sox losing to the Yankees in 2003, ending the curse in 2004 with the infamous “band of idiots,” including his extraordinary clutch hitting to overcome a 3-0 series deficit against the Yankees, to earning a second title in 2007 and a third in 2013.

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41 .) Summer of ’49 by David Halberstam

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Sporting News

With incredible skill, passion, and insight, Pulitzer Prize–winningauthor David Halberstam returns us to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat. The year was 1949, and a war-weary nation turned from the battlefields to the ball fields in search of new heroes. It was a summer that marked the beginning of a sports rivalry unequaled in the annals of athletic competition. The awesome New York Yankees and the indomitable Boston Red Sox were fighting for supremacy of baseball’s American League, and an aging Joe DiMaggio and a brash, headstrong hitting phenomenon named Ted Williams led their respective teams in a classic pennant duel of almost mythic proportions—one that would be decided in an explosive head-to-head confrontation on the last day of the season.

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40 .) Teammate: My Journey in Baseball and a World Series for the Ages by David Ross with Don Yeager, foreword

Lists It Appears On:

• Barnes & Noble
• Sports Collectors Digest

In 2016 the Cubs snapped a 108-year curse, winning the World Series in a history-making, seven-game series against the Cleveland Indians. Of the many storylines to Chicago’s fairytale season, one stood out: the late-career renaissance of David Ross, the 39-year-old catcher who had played back-up for 13 of his 15 pro seasons.

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39 .) The Bad Guys Won! by Jeff Pearlman

Lists It Appears On:

• Flashlight Worthy Books
• Goodreads

The Bad Guys Won, award-winning Sports Illustrated baseball writer Jeff Pearlman returns to an innocent time when a city worshipped a man named Mookie and the Yankees were the second-best team in New York. It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin’s left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake—hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox. With an unforgettable cast of characters—including Doc, Straw, the Kid, Nails, Mex, and manager Davey Joshson—this “affectionate but critical look at this exciting season” (Publishers Weekly) celebrates the last of baseball’s arrogant, insane, rock-and-roll-and-party-all-night teams, exploring what could have been, what should have been, and what never was.

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38 .) The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin

Lists It Appears On:

• Flashlight Worthy Books
• Sporting News

Written by three esteemed baseball statisticians, The Book continues where the legendary Bill James’ Baseball Abstracts and Palmer and Thorn’s The Hidden Game of Baseball left off more than twenty years ago. Continuing in the grand tradition of sabermetrics, the authors provide a revolutionary way to think about baseball with principles that can be applied at every level, from high school to the major leagues. Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin cover topics such as batting and pitching matchups, platooning, the benefits and risks of intentional walks and sacrifices, the legitimacy of alleged clutch hitters, and many of baseball’s other theories on hitting, fielding, pitching, and even baserunning.

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37 .) The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg by Nicholas Dawidoff

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• NY Times

The only Major League ballplayer whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA, Moe Berg has the singular distinction of having both a 15-year career as a catcher for such teams as the New York Robins and the Chicago White Sox and that of a spy for the OSS during World War II. Here, Dawidoff provides “a careful and sympathetic biography”

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36 .) The Chicago Cubs: History of a Curse by Rich Cohen

Lists It Appears On:

• IPPL
• Sports Collectors Digest

A captivating blend of reportage and memoir exploring the history of the Chicago Cubs When Rich Cohen was eight years old, his father took him to see a Cubs game. On the way out of the park, his father asked him to make a promise. “Promise me you will never be a Cubs fan. The Cubs do not win,” he explained, “and because of that, a Cubs fan will have a diminished life determined by low expectations. That team will screw up your life.” As a result, Cohen became not just a Cubs fan but one of the biggest Cubs fans in the world. In this book, he captures the story of the team, its players and crazy days. Billy Sunday and Ernie Banks, Three Finger Brown and Ryne Sandberg, Bill Buckner, the Bartman Ball, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo—the early dominance followed by a 107 year trek across the wilderness. It’s all here—not just what happened, but what it felt like and what it meant. He searches for the cause of the famous curse. Was it the billy goat, kicked out of Wrigley Field in Game 5 of the 1945 World Series, or does it go back further, to the very origins of the franchise? Driven mad with futility, he went on the road with the team in search of answers, interviewed great players present and past, researched in libraries but also in the bleachers, double-fisted, a frosty malt in each hand, demanding answers. He came to see the curse as a burden but also as a blessing. Cubs fans are unique, emissaries from a higher realm, warning of hubris and vanity. The blue cap with the red C said, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” He interviewed the architects of the 2016 Cubs, the team that broke the curse. Here’s what he asked: How the hell did you do it?

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35 .) The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse

Lists It Appears On:

• IPPL
• The Lead Sports

With inside access and reporting, Sports Illustrated senior baseball writer and FOX Sports analyst Tom Verducci reveals how Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon built, led, and inspired the Chicago Cubs team that broke the longest championship drought in sports, chronicling their epic journey to become World Series champions. It took 108 years, but it really happened. The Chicago Cubs are once again World Series champions. How did a team composed of unknown, young players and supposedly washed-up veterans come together to break the Curse of the Billy Goat? Tom Verducci, twice named National Sportswriter of the Year and co-writer of The Yankee Years with Joe Torre, will have full access to team president Theo Epstein, manager Joe Maddon, and the players to tell the story of the Cubs’ transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball. Beginning with Epstein’s first year with the team in 2011, Verducci will show how Epstein went beyond “Moneyball” thinking to turn around the franchise. Leading the organization with a manual called “The Cubs Way,” he focused on the mental side of the game as much as the physical, emphasizing chemistry as well as statistics. To accomplish his goal, Epstein needed manager Joe Maddon, an eccentric innovator, as his counterweight on the Cubs’ bench. A man who encourages themed road trips and late-arrival game days to loosen up his team, Maddon mixed New Age thinking with Old School leadership to help his players find their edge.

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34 .) The Girl Who Threw Butterflies by Mick Cochrane

Lists It Appears On:

• Bustle
• Read Brightly

For an eighth grader, Molly Williams has more than her fair share of problems. Her father has just died in a car accident, and her mother has become a withdrawn, quiet version of herself. Molly doesn’t want to be seen as “Miss Difficulty Overcome”; she wants to make herself known to the kids at school for something other than her father’s death. So she decides to join the baseball team. The boys’ baseball team. Her father taught her how to throw a knuckleball, and Molly hopes it’s enough to impress her coaches as well as her new teammates. Over the course of one baseball season, Molly must figure out how to redefine her relationships to things she loves, loved, and might love: her mother; her brilliant best friend, Celia; her father; her enigmatic and artistic teammate, Lonnie; and of course, baseball. Mick Cochrane is a professor of English and the Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

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33 .) The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood by Jane Leavy

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Sporting News

Award-winning sports writer Jane Leavy follows her New York Times runaway bestseller Sandy Koufax with the definitive biography of baseball icon Mickey Mantle. The legendary Hall-of-Fame outfielder was a national hero during his record-setting career with the New York Yankees, but public revelations of alcoholism, infidelity, and family strife badly tarnished the ballplayer’s reputation in his latter years. In The Last Boy, Leavy plumbs the depths of the complex athlete, using copious first-hand research as well as her own memories, to show why The Mick remains the most beloved and misunderstood Yankee slugger of all time.

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32 .) The Last Good Season by Michael Shapiro

Lists It Appears On:

• NY Times
• The Daily Beast

In the bestselling tradition of The Boys of Summer and Wait ‘Til Next Year, The Last Good Season is the poignant and dramatic story of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ last pennant and the forces that led to their heartbreaking departure to Los Angeles. The 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers were one of baseball’s most storied teams, featuring such immortals as Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, and Roy Campanella. The love between team and borough was equally storied, an iron bond of loyalty forged through years of adversity and sometimes legendary ineptitude. Coming off their first World Series triumph ever in 1955, against the hated Yankees, the Dodgers would defend their crown against the Milwaukee Braves and the Cincinnati Reds in a six-month neck-and-neck contest until the last day of the playoffs, one of the most thrilling pennant races in history. But as The Last Good Season so richly relates, all was not well under the surface. The Dodgers were an aging team at the tail end of its greatness, and Brooklyn was a place caught up in rapid and profound urban change. From a cradle of white ethnicity, it was being transformed into a racial patchwork, including Puerto Ricans and blacks from the South who flocked to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers’ black stars.

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31 .) The Lords of the Realm by John Helyar

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Nicholas E. Barron

In this fascinating, colorful chronicle — based on hundreds of interviews and years of research and digging — John Helyar brings to vivid life the extraordinary people and dramatic events that shaped America’s favorite pastime, from the dead-ball days at the turn of the century through the great strike of 1994. Witness zealous Judge Landis banish eight players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, after the infamous “Black Sox” scandal; the flamboyant A’s owner Charlie Finley wheel and deal his star players, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers, like a deck of cards; the hysterical bidding war of coveted free agent Catfish Hunter; the chain-smoking romantic, A. Bartlett Giamatti, locking horns with Pete Rose during his gambling days of summer; and much more . . . .

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30 .) The Natural by Bernard Malamud

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• NY Times

The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film) now in a new edition Introduction by Kevin Baker The Natural, Bernard Malamud’s first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin’s comment still holds true: “Malamud has done something which—now that he has done it!—looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology.”

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29 .) The Summer Game by Roger Angell

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Sporting News

The Summer Game, Roger Angell’s first book on the sport, changed baseball writing forever. Thoughtful, funny, appreciative of the elegance of the game and the passions invested by players and fans, it goes beyond the usual sports reporter’s beat to examine baseball’s complex place in our American psyche. Between the miseries of the 1962 expansion Mets and a classic 1971 World Series between the Pirates and the Orioles, Angell finds baseball in the 1960s as a game in transition—marked by league expansion, uprooted franchises, the growing hegemony of television, the dominance of pitchers, uneasy relations between players and owners, and mounting competition from other sports for the fans’ dollars. Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Brooks Robinson, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Carl Yastrzemski, Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, and Casey Stengel are seen here with fresh clarity and pleasure. Here is California baseball in full flower, the once-mighty Yankees in collapse, baseball in French (in Montreal), indoor baseball (at the Astrodome), and sweet spring baseball (in Florida)—as Angell observes, “Always, it seems, there is something more to be discovered about this game.”

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28 .) The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• NY Times

More than 6 years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country’s most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his ground-breaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves. The Teammates is the profoundly moving story of four great baseball players who have made the passage from sports icons–when they were young and seemingly indestructible–to men dealing with the vulnerabilities of growing older. At the core of the book is the friendship of these four very different men–Boston Red Sox teammates Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams–who remained close for more than sixty years. The book starts out in early October 2001, when Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky begin a 1,300-mile trip by car to visit their beloved friend Ted Williams, whom they know is dying. Bobby Doerr, the fourth member of this close group–“my guys,” Williams used to call them–is unable to join them.

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27 .) Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager by H.G. Bissinger

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• The Lead Sports

Three Nights in August captures the strategic and emotional complexities of baseball’s quintessential form, the three-game series. As the St. Louis Cardinals battle their archrival Chicago Cubs, we watch from the dugout through the eyes of legendary manager Tony La Russa, considered by many to be the shrewdest mind in the game today. In his twenty-seven years of managing, La Russa has been named Manager of the Year a record-making five times and now stands as the third-winningest baseball manager of all time. A great leader, he’s built his success on the conviction that ball games are won not only by the numbers but also by the hearts and minds of those who play. Drawing on unprecedented access to a major league manager and his team, Buzz Bissinger brings a revelatory intimacy to baseball and offers some surprising observations. Bissinger also furthers the debate on major league managerial style and strategy in his provocative new afterword.

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26 .) Total Baseball by John Thorn and Pete Palmer

Lists It Appears On:

• SABR
• Sporting News

the eighth edition of Total Baseball: the ultimate baseball encyclopedia is the most striking, compelling and comprehensive single volume ever devoted to America’s pastime.

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25 .) Veeck–As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Nicholas E. Barron

Bill Veeck was an inspired team builder, a consummate showman, and one of the greatest baseball men ever involved in the game. His classic autobiography, written with the talented sportswriter Ed Linn, is an uproarious book packed with information about the history of baseball and tales of players and owners, including some of the most entertaining stories in all of sports literature.

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24 .) Waiting for Pumpsie by Barry Wittenstein

Lists It Appears On:

• SF Chronicle
• We Are Teachers

In 1959 the Boston Red Sox was the last team in the Major Leagues to integrate. But when they call Elijah “Pumpsie” Green up from the minors, Bernard is overjoyed to see a black player on his beloved home team. And, when Pumpsie’s first home game is scheduled, Bernard and his family head to Fenway Park. Bernard is proud of Pumpsie and hopeful that this historic event is the start of great change in America. This fictionalized account captures the true story of baseball player Pumpsie Green’s rise to the major leagues. The story is a snapshot of the Civil Rights Movement and a great discussion starter about the state of race relations in the United States today.

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23 .) Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? by Bill James

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Sporting News

Arguing about the merits of players is the baseball fan’s second favorite pastime and every year the Hall of Fame elections spark heated controversy. In a book that’s sure to thrill–and infuriate–countless fans, Bill James takes a hard look at the Hall, probing its history, its politics and, most of all, its decisions.

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22 .) Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball by R.A. Dickey

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Sports Illustrated

AN INSPIRATIONAL MEMOIR OF OVERCOMING EXTRAORDINARY ADVERSITY. THIS ACCLAIMED AND RIVETING STORY IS A FIVE STAR REVIEWED, STATED FIRST EDITION HARDCOVER BY R.A. DICKEY, WINNER OF THE 2012 CY YOUNG AWARD. “AN ASTOUNDING MEMOIR – HAUNTING AND TOUCHING, COURAGEOUS AND WISE” JEREMY SCHAAP, BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND EMMY AWARD WINNING JOURNALIST, ESPN. DICKEY, ONE OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE’S PREMIER PLAYERS ELOQUENTLY SHARES HIS CHALLENGING TALE OF SUCCEEDING AGAINST EXTRAORDINARY ODDS TO COME BACK FROM HORRIFIC PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL AND FINANCIAL PROBLEMS.

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21 .) You Know Me Al by Ring Lardner

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• The Daily Beast

“You Know me Al” is a classic of baseball–the game and the community. Jack Keefe, one of literature’s greatest characters, is talented, brash, and conceited. Self-assured and imperceptive, impervious to both advice and sarcasm, Keefe rises to the heights, but his inability to learn makes for his undoing. Through a series of letters from this bush-league pitcher to his not-quite-anonymous friend Al, Lardner maintains a balance between the funny and the moving, the pathetic and the glorious. Nostalgic in its view of pre-World War I America–a time before the “live” ball, a time filled with names like Ty Cobb, Charles Comiskey, Walter Johnson, and Eddie Cicotte–this is not a simple period piece. It is about competition, about the ability to reason, and most of all it is about being human.

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20 .) October 1964 by David Halberstam

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• NY Times
• The Daily Beast

In 1989 David Halberstam published “Summer of ’49,” which became a #1 “New York Times” bestseller. It was a compelling portrait of baseball in an America as yet unchanged by affluence, technology, and social progress. The players, almost all white, had been raised in harsh circumstances, the games were played in the afternoon on grass and were broadcast on radio, the teams traveled by train, and the owners had dictatorial power over the players. Here also was the story of the Yankees winning the first of their pennants under Casey Stengel before going on to become baseball’s greatest dynasty.

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19 .) Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• NY Times
• The Daily Beast

Henry Wiggen, hero of The Southpaw and the best-known fictional baseball player in America, is back again, throwing a baseball “with his arm and his brain and his memory and his bluff for the sake of his pocket and his family.” More than a novel about baseball, Bang the Drum Slowly is about the friendship and the lives of a group of men as they each learn that a teammate is dying of cancer. Bang the Drum Slowly was chosen as one of the top one hundred sports books of all time by Sports Illustrated and appears on numerous other lists of best baseball fiction. In the introduction to this new Bison Books edition Mark Harris discusses the making of the classic 1973 film starring Robert DeNiro, based on his screen adaptation of the book.

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18 .) Baseball’s Great Experiment by Jules Tygiel

Lists It Appears On:

• Bat and Ball Game
• Five Books 2
• Nicholas E. Barron

In 1997 the American people will celebrate with great fanfare and publicity the fiftieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s explosive entrance into major league baseball. Robinson has become a national icon, his name a virtual synonym for pathbreaker. Indeed, much has transpired between this young African-American’s first bold strides around the baseball diamonds of a segregated America and General Manager Bob Watson’s pride in assembling 1996 World Champion New York Yankees. Recognizing this monumental event in America’s continuing struggle for integration, Jules Tygiel has expanded his highly acclaimed Baseball’s Great Experiment. In a new afterword, he addresses the mythology surrounding Robinson’s achievements, his overall effect on baseball and other sports, and the enduring legacy Robinson has left for African Americans and American society. In this gripping account of one of the most important steps in the history of American desegregation, Tygiel tells the story of Jackie Robinson’s crossing of baseball’s color line.

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17 .) Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• IPPL
• NY Times

The headlines proclaimed the 1919 fix of the World Series and attempted cover-up as “the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America!” First published in 1963, Eight Men Out has become a timeless classic. Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation’s leading gamblers to throw the Series in Cincinnati. Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to the Series, only to be rocked by the scandal.

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16 .) Five Seasons by Roger Angell

Lists It Appears On:

• Bat and Ball Game
• Mens Journal
• Nicholas E. Barron

Five Seasons covers the baseball seasons from 1972 through 1976, described as the “most significant half decade in the history of the game.” The era was notable for the remarkable individual feats of Hank Aaron, Lou Brock, and Nolan Ryan, among others. It also presented one of the best World Series of all time (1975), including still the greatest World Series game ever played (Game Six). Along with visiting other games and campaigns, Roger Angell meets a trio of Tigers-obsessed fans, goes to a game with a departing old-style owner, watches high-school ball in Kentucky with a famous scout, and explores the sad and astounding mystery of Steve Blass’s vanished control. Angell’s Five Seasons is a gem and a gift for baseball lovers of all ages.

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15 .) The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Sports Illustrated
• The Daily Beast

The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment – to oneself and to others. At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry’s fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry’s gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners’ team captain and Henry’s best friend, realizes he has guided Henry’s career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert’s daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths.

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14 .) The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First by Jonah Keri

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• The Baseball Journal
• The Lead Sports

What happens when three financial industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing major league franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens—the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history.

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13 .) The Great American Novel by Philip Roth

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Sports Illustrated
• The Daily Beast

In this ribald, richly imagined, and wickedly satiric novel, Roth turns baseball’s status as national pastime and myth into an occasion for unfettered picaresque farce, replete with heroism and perfidy, ebullient wordplay and a cast of characters that includes the House Un-American Activities Committee.

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12 .) Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Mens Journal
• Nicholas E. Barron

By the award-winning author of Team of Rivals and The Bully Pulpit, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball. Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans. We meet the people who most influenced Goodwin’s early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness left her housebound: and her father, who taught her the joy of baseball and to root for the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges.

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11 .) Babe: The Legend Comes to Life by Robert W. Creamer

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Nicholas E. Barron
• NY Times
• Sporting News

“I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.” — Babe Ruth Babe Ruth is without a doubt the most famous character ever produced by the sport of baseball. A legendary player, world-famous for his hitting prowess, he transcended the sport to enter the mainstream of American life as an authentic folk hero. In this extraordinary biography, noted sportswriter Robert W. Creamer reveals the complex man behind the sports legend. From Ruth’s early days in a Baltimore orphanage, to the glory days with the Yankees, to his later years, Creamer has drawn a classic portrait of an American original.

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10 .) Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life by Richard Ben Cramer

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Nicholas E. Barron
• NY Times
• Sporting News

Joe DiMaggio was a mirror Joe DiMaggio was, at every turn, one man we could look at who made us feel good. In the hard-knuckled thirties, he was the immigrant boy who made it big—and spurred the New York Yankees to a new era of dynasty. He was the Yankee Clipper, the icon of elegance, the man who wooed and won Marilyn Monroe—the most beautiful girl America could dream up. Joe DiMaggio was a mirror of our best self. And he was also the loneliest hero we ever had. In this groundbreaking biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer presents a shocking portrait of a complicated, enigmatic life. The story that DiMaggio never wanted told, tells of his grace—and greed; his dignity, pride—and hidden shame.

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9 .) Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams by Robert W. Peterson

Lists It Appears On:

• Bat and Ball Game
• Goodreads
• Nicholas E. Barron
• Sporting News

Early in the 1920s, the New York Giants sent a scout to watch a young Cuban play for Foster’s American Giants, a baseball club in the Negro Leagues. During one at-bat this talented slugger lined a ball so hard that the rightfielder was able to play it off the top of the fence and throw Christobel Torrienti out at first base.

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8 .) Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy by Jane Leavy

Lists It Appears On:

• Five Books
• Goodreads
• Nicholas E. Barron
• NY Times

“The incomparable and mysterious Sandy Koufax is revealed…. This is an absorbing book, beautifully written.”

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7 .) The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James

Lists It Appears On:

• Five Books
• Goodreads
• NY Times
• Sporting News

When Bill James published his original Historical Baseball Abstract in 1985, he produced an immediate classic, hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the “holy book of baseball.” Now, baseball’s beloved “Sultan of Stats” (The Boston Globe) is back with a fully revised and updated edition for the new millennium. Like the original, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is really several books in one. The Game provides a century’s worth of American baseball history, told one decade at a time, with energetic facts and figures about How, Where, and by Whom the game was played. In The Players, you’ll find listings of the top 100 players at each position in the major leagues, along with James’s signature stats-based ratings method called “Win Shares,” a way of quantifying individual performance and calculating the offensive and defensive contributions of catchers, pitchers, infielders, and outfielders. And there’s more: the Reference section covers Win Shares for each season and each player, and even offers a Win Share team comparison.

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6 .) The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America by Joe Posnanski

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Mens Journal
• Nicholas E. Barron
• Sporting News

When Legendary Negro League player Buck O’Neil asked sports columnist Joe Posnanski how he fell in love with baseball, Posnanski had to think about it. From that question was born the idea behind BASEBALL AND JAZZ. Posnanski and the 94 year old O’Neil decided to spend the 2005 baseball season touring the country in hopes of stirring up the love that first drew them to the game. This book is just as much the story of Buck O’Neil as it is the story of baseball. In a time when disillusioned, steroid–shooting, money hungry athletes define the sport, Buck O’Neil stands out as a man that truly played for the love of the game. Posnanski writes about that love and the one thing that O’Neil loved almost as much as baseball: jazz.

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5 .) The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

Lists It Appears On:

• Five Books
• Goodreads
• Sporting News
• Sports Illustrated
• The Daily Beast

This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster, and told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and love.

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4 .) The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter

Lists It Appears On:

• Five Books
• Five Books 2
• Goodreads
• Nicholas E. Barron
• Sporting News

Baseball was different in earlier days—tougher, rawer, more intimate—when giants like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb ran the bases. In the monumental classic The Glory of Their Times, the golden era of our national pastime comes alive through the vibrant words of those who played and lived the game.

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3 .) The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics by Alan Schwarz

Lists It Appears On:

• Flashlight Worthy Books
• Goodreads
• Mens Journal
• Nicholas E. Barron
• Sporting News

Most baseball fans, players and even team executives assume that the national pastime’s infatuation with statistics is simply a by-product of the information age, a phenomenon that blossomed only after the arrival of Bill James and computers in the 1980s. They couldn’t be more wrong. In this award-winning book, Alan Schwarz – whom bestselling Moneyball author Michael Lewis calls “one of today’s best baseball journalists” – provides the first-ever history of baseball statistics, showing how baseball and its numbers have been inseparable ever since the pastime’s birth in 1845. He tells the history of this obsession through the lives of the people who felt it most: Henry Chadwick, the 19th-century writer who invented the first box score and harped endlessly about which statistics mattered and which did not; Allan Roth, Branch Rickey’s right-hand numbers man with the late-1940s Brooklyn Dodgers; Earnshaw Cook, a scientist and Manhattan Project veteran who retired to pursue inventing the perfect baseball statistic; John Dewan, a former Strat-O-Matic maven who built STATS Inc. into a multimillion-dollar powerhouse for statistics over the Internet; and dozens more. Schwarz paints a history not just of baseball statistics, but of the soul of the sport itself.

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2 .) Ball Four by Jim Bouton

Lists It Appears On:

• Bat and Ball Game
• Five Books
• Goodreads
• Mens Journal
• Nicholas E. Barron
• Sporting News
• The Daily Beast

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 serious critics called it an important social document. Today, Jim Bouton is still not invited to Oldtimer’s Days at Yankee Stadium. But his landmark book is still being read by people who don’t ordinarily follow baseball.

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1 .) Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

Lists It Appears On:

• Bat and Ball Game
• Flashlight Worthy Books
• Goodreads
• Mens Journal
• Nicholas E. Barron
• NY Times
• Sporting News
• The Lead Sports

Billy Beane, general manager of MLB’s Oakland A’s and protagonist of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that’s smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans. Lewis was in the room with the A’s top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself.

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The 250+ Additional Best Books About Baseball

26 Best Fiction and Nonfiction Books About Baseball Sources/Lists