Baseball Season is Upon Us

And I couldn't be happier. Maybe the snow will melt before the All-Star Break.

While you're waiting for the first pitch, why not revisit some of the great baseball books, both new and old?

Not everyone is aware that Don Hall's Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball is back in print, or at least available as a print-on-demand title. We're keeping it in stock. It's an engaging portrait of one of baseball's great eccentrics, Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis, written by one of our most esteemed men of letters.

A new classic is The Cheater's Guide to Baseball, by Derek Zumsteg. "Baseball’s been fraught with cheating since its inception and ... cheating has done much to shape the game we know," he writes. It's all about getting inside the head of your opponent and playing all the angles. This is a fascinating approach to the game we love.

The serious fan will not want to be without The SABR Baseball List & Record Book and the Baseball America Prospect Handbook. With these, you can win all arguments about the past and about the future. (Though, it must be said, most baseball arguments are not winnable.)

Looking for local color? Try Swinging for the Majors: Inside the New Hampshire Fisher Cats Championship Season, and Dem Little Bums: The Nashua Dodgers. Both are published by Plaidswede Press.

There have been more great novels published about baseball than about any other sport. My favorite is The Great American Novel, by Philip Roth, a brilliantly funny picaresque featuring a pitcher named Gil Gamesh and a league, the Patriot League, that has tragically been erased from our national memory. Other favorites by Kinsella, Malamud, and Howard Frank Mosher (Waiting for Teddy Williams) bear rereading once every couple of years.

And let's not forget The Last Best League, by Jim Collins--an affectionate look at the Cape Cod League; Teammates, by the late David Halbserstam, all about the enduring friendship between Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky and Ted Williams; and memoirs by the two great Rogers of baseball writing (and no, I don't mean Clemens): Roger Kahn and Roger Angell.

The great thing about baseball is that it, like reading, occurs in a sort of Zen state, outside of time. Nothing and everything are happening simultaneously. That's why baseball and books go so well together. (And that's why you can read and watch a game at the same time--so come get a book!)