Baseball's Best Books

Some fiction, some non, but all favorite books about America's favorite past time.
Updated September 19, 2022
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The Natural
Bernard Malamud
Paper Book
The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film starring Robert Redford) 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-...
Shoeless Joe
W. P. Kinsella
Paper Book
The inspiration for the beloved film Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella is the story about the beauty and history of baseball, and the power and endurance of a dream. "A moonlit novel about baseball, dreams, family, the land, and literature."--Sports Illustrated "If you...
If I Never Get Back
Darryl Brock
Paper Book
Sam Fowler is taking a modern-day Amtrak home to San Francisco when an unscheduled stop somewhere west of Cleveland gives him the opportunity to stretch his legs. Instead, Sam finds that time has stretched and mysteriously transported him back to 1869. Bewildered at first, Sam soon meets up with...
The Great American Novel
Philip Roth
Paper Book
The Brothers K
David James Duncan
Paper Book
Bang the Drum Slowly
Mark Harris
Paper Book
Henry Wiggen, hero of The Southpaw, became the best-known fictional baseball player in America. Now he is back again in Bang the Drum Slowly, throwing a baseball "with his arm and his brain and his memory and his bluff for the sake of his pocket and his family." Also available...
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Michael Lewis
Paper Book
Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only "the single most influential baseball book ever"...
The Art of Fielding
Chad Harbach
Paper Book
A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this widely acclaimed tale about love, life, and baseball, praised by the New York Times as "wonderful...a novel that is every bit as entertaining as it is affecting." 
The Boys of Summer
Roger Kahn
Paper Book
This is a book about some young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s in such places as Reading, Pennsylvania; Anderson, Indiana; Plainfield, New Jersey; Woonsocket, Rhode Island; and then went on to play for one of the most exciting professional teams that the major leagues...
We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball
Kadir Nelson
Paper Book
In this New York Times bestselling classic, Caldecott Medal-winning artist Kadir Nelson tells the incredible story of baseball's unsung heroes -- perfect for celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Negro Leagues! Winner of the Coretta Scott King Author ...
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.
Robert Coover
Ebook
A middle-aged accountant presides passionately over a fantasy baseball league in a "flagrantly funny" novel from the award-winning author of Huck Out West (The New York Times). J. Henry Waugh is not particularly happy in his job, but after the workday...
The Veracruz Blues
Mark Winegardner
Paper Book
"When big-league ballplayers return from the war, unhappy with the contracts the club owners offer them, the wealthy Pasquel brothers pay unheard-of salaries to lure disaffected players - Sal Maglie, Vern Stephens, Danny Gardella, Max Lanier among them - to Mexico. When they get there, they see that...
The Dixie Association (Voices of the South)
Donald Hays
Paper Book
Meet the Arkansas Reds, the oddest, craziest, wildest bunch of sluggers ever to step out of a dugout. An ex-con first baseman named Hog chronicles a season with the Reds as they travel from one seedy southern ballpark to another--always one step ahead of the small-town sheriffs and right-wing...
The Greatest Slump of All Time
David Carkeet
Paper Book
Queen of the Negro Leagues : Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles
James Overmyer
Paper Book
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues, this bookhonors the life of Effa Manley, the trailblazing female co-owner of baseball's Newark Eagles. The first woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, there was no one like Effa Manley in...
Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy
Jules Tygiel
Paper Book
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...
How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed
Thomas W. Gilbert
Paper Book
The fascinating, true, story of baseball's amateur origins. "Explores the conditions and factors that begat the game in the 19th century and turned it into the national pastime....A delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat."--Paul...
The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron
Howard Bryant
Paper Book
In the thirty-four years since his retirement, Henry Aaron's reputation has only grown in magnitude: he broke existing records (rbis, total bases, extra-base hits) and set new ones (hitting at least thirty home runs per season fifteen times, becoming the first player in history to hammer five...
Bad boys, bad times : the Cleveland Indians and baseball in the prewar years, 1937-1941
Longert, Scott
Paper Book
In 1937, the Great Depression was still lingering, but at baseball parks across the country there was a sense of optimism. Major League attendance was on a sharp rise. Tickets to an Indians game at League Park on Lexington and East 66th were $1.60 for box seats, $1.35 for reserve seats, and $.55...

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