As "The Literary Baseball Magazine," Spitball has undertaken as part of its basic mission the task of reviewing as many deserving baseball books as possible, with empathy, appreciation, and authority. On this website and in the magazine itself we attempt to serve as the baseball book reviewer of record.
Recently Reviewed Baseball Books
Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella
Reviewed by: Charlie Vascellaro (September 26, 2011)
Neil Lanctot's recent biography Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella, would seem to refer to the great catcher's life before and after an automobile accident left him a paraplegic, ending his baseball playing career in 1958, 10 years after he became one of the breakthrough group of African American major leaguers with the Brooklyn Dodgers. However, the book's title may also convey two additional double entendres: one concerning his dual ethnicity as an African-American and Italian-American, and another perhaps his two baseball careers as a veteran of both the Negro and Major professional leagues. In any event, themes of duality are consistently revisited throughout this well-balanced assessment of Campanella's complex life. Read More
Hutch: Baseball's Fred Hutchinson and a Legacy of Courage
Reviewed by: Mark W. Schraf (August 5, 2011)
The book’s illustrations – of course, the main vehicle used to move a graphic novel’s narrative forward - are a joy from first page to last, both in the quality and skill of the mostly representational artwork, but also in the playfulness and originality of the panel choices. Seamlessly melding art with the written word, Shannon employs a chronological structure, beginning with the dark events surrounding the 1919 World Series between the victorious Cincinnati Reds and the infamous Black Sox, to introduce Hutchinson's story. Read More
"21": The Story of Roberto Clemente
Reviewed by: Mark W. Schraf (June 18, 2011)
Captivating, revealing, and dramatic, "21" accomplished through art, creative use of informed imagination, and pure passion, far more than I thought possible from a graphic novel. I believe I now have a more complete picture of Roberto Clemente, but not of his statistics, or even his style of play, or of his place in baseball history. I have a truer sense of his heart. Read More
Bottom Of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game
Reviewed by: Mark W. Schraf (June 17, 2011)
We are SPITBALL: The Literary Baseball Magazine, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we are passionate about fine writing, especially about baseball. And while literature can be defined as broadly as one might wish, there is nothing that gets us as pumped up as finding an exquisitely written baseball book, regardless of the subject. Bottom of the 33rd is one of those special books, and Dan Barry is one of those special authors. Read More
Pujols: More Than the Game
Reviewed by: William J. McGill (May 15, 2011)
Anyone who has seen Albert Pujols hit a home run--and there have been ample opportunities since in his ten + years in the major leagues he has hit over 400 of them--should have noted two things: the grace and power of his swing and his gesture as he crosses home plate, looking and pointing skyward. Those two things define who he is: a gifted athlete who works hard to make the best use of his gift and a man who believes in giving thanks to God for bestowing it on him. As he has said: "Baseball is simply my platform to elevate Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior." Read More
The Ringer
Reviewed by: Mark Schraf (April 10, 2011)
And remarkably, thankfully, nary a cliché is to be found, and that goes a long way in making The Ringer an exciting, intellectually challenging, and altogether worthwhile effort. Read More
The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches
Reviewed by: Mike Shannon (March 12, 2011)
Of all the numerous unique aspects that the game of baseball has going for it, none is more important or more fascinating that the ball itself. Our familiarity with this most commonplace of all sports objects belies just how little we average fans know about it. The antidote to this pervasive ignorance is to be found in the first book to take as its entire subject the baseball itself, Zack Hample’s The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches. Read More
The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad
Reviewed by: William J. McGill (November 15, 2010)
Given the fulsome nature of the sub-title it hardly seems necessary to say what this book is about, but in the event there is any question let me quote two sentences from the front flap of the dust jacket: ”Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the world?" Read More
Pie Traynor: A Baseball Biography
Reviewed by: Mike Shannon (October 17, 2010)
Pie Traynor: A Baseball Biography immeasurably increases both our knowledge of and respect for the greatest third baseman to ever wear a Pirates' uniform. Read More
The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron
Reviewed by: William J. McGill (September 30, 2010)
There is much to admire and enjoy about this fulsome biography of Henry Aaron, not the first book about him, but certainly the most ambitious and thorough. Read More
The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven: How a Ragtag Group of Fans Took the Fall for Major League Baseball
Reviewed by: Mike Shannon (August 14, 2010)
It’s a cliché but true nonetheless that the typical fan turns to sports for entertainment and a pleasurable escape from the headaches of "real" life. Fans don’t like it when the curtain is pulled aside and they are forced to admit the fact that the sports world is infected with some of the same problems afflicting the larger society: greed, corruption, dishonesty, drug use, etc. Read More
The Man With Two Arms
Reviewed by: Mark Schraf (August 2, 2010)
He captures the inner dialog of a father who wants desperately to give his only son the very best possible chance to succeed in the game he so passionately loves. The game descriptions and conversation are both spot on. Characterization is strong, with no cardboard characters to be found. Read More
Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards
Reviewed by: Joshua Fleer (July 1, 2010)
In Cardboard Gods, Wilker moves us beyond baseball cards as monetary investment to place us inside his Transcendentalist-esque realization of their ability to transcend time and make tangible a golden age of childhood. He takes us to a simpler time when older brothers were idolized and happiness could be found in a nickel pack of cards. Read More
Reviewed by: Mike Shannon (May 12, 2010)
Of all the major team sports baseball is the one which has engendered the most variations upon a theme in terms of playing the game. Far from requiring nine to a side, kids, by themselves or in the smallest of groups, have found innumerable ways to replicate the baseball playing experience, often using something other than a baseball to do so. Corks, rocks, bottle caps, golf balls, tennis balls, rubber balls, and even rubber balls sawed in half (among others) have all served as substitutes for actual baseballs, but the king of all baseball substitutes is a specially-made plastic ball, known as the Wiffle ball. Read More
The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris by Mark Kurlansky
If you're a kid in a small town in the Dominican Republic and you want to play baseball but have no equipment, you use whatever might be available. You make a ball out of old socks, a bat out of a stick, and a glove out of a milk carton. Read More
Dave Jamieson has produced an elegant history of baseball cards that for the average collector or former collector is informative, fascinating, nostalgic, and … depressing as hell. Read More
Reviewed by: Mike Shannon (March 25, 2010)
Fortunately, for all baseball literature fans and especially for the millions of us Mays aficionados, James S. Hirsch has proven himself to be up to the task, and brilliantly so. Read More
Reviewed by: Alex Holzman (Feb. 22, 2010)
Any book that sets out to name the top ten fastball pitchers of all time is sure to provoke controversy, and Tim Wendel accomplishes just that in his somewhat quirky, somewhat biased, freewheeling, and always entertaining book, High Heat. Read More
Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero by Tom Clavin and Danny Peary
Heretofore there have been only a couple of books about Roger Maris; including Maury Allen's Roger Maris: A Man for All Seasons, published in the wake of Maris' untimely death at the age of 51 in December of 1985, and Maris at the Bat, a collaborative account with Jim Ogle of his sixty-one home run season in 1961. Thus, it is high time that a more definitive biography, such as Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero, should be attempted. Read More
Rum Point: A Baseball Novel by Rick Wilber
Reviewed by: Mike Shannon (Jan. 25, 2010)
The baseball mystery novel is a tricky proposition, a combination of delicious tastes difficult to mix successfully. For readers who are more fans of mystery than of baseball, too much who-done-it is an impossibility. On the other hand, when the baseball is subordinate to the mystery, fans of fiction about baseball first and foremost may finish such a book feeling a little dissatisfied. The latest baseball mystery to deal with this literary conumdrum is Rick Wilber's Rum Point: A Baseball Novel. Read More
The baseball mystery novel is a tricky proposition, a combination of delicious tastes difficult to mix successfully. For readers who are more fans of mystery than of baseball, too much who-done-it is an impossibility. On the other hand, when the baseball is subordinate to the mystery, fans of fiction about baseball first and foremost may finish such a book feeling a little dissatisfied. The latest baseball mystery to deal with this literary conumdrum is Rick Wilber's Rum Point: A Baseball Novel. Read More
Reviewed by: Mike Shannon (Jan. 1, 2010)
Given the title, it's not surprising that Achorn's book is a seasonal account of Radbourn's best season on the hill (actually there was no mound back then for pitchers to throw from, an example of the type of detail about the way the game was played in Radbourn's era that Achorn expertly delineates for the reader), which is also the best season any pitcher ever had (from a strictly won-loss record point of view)! But it is also a start-to-finish biography and one which, though seemingly condensed compared to the space given the one year of 1884, is perhaps as complete a biography of the man as we are ever likely to get. Read More
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