Baseball Frozen in History | Sports Illustrated: Great Baseball Writing

Baseball heaven! | Sports Illustrated: Great Baseball Writing | Editors of Sports Illustrated

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	• Sports Illustrated: Great Baseball Writing Editors of Sports Illustrated Sports Illustrated, 2005 - 560 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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A Home Run with the Bases Juiced

The book contains just over 50 essays collected from the 50+ years of Sports Illustrated. I own several hundred baseball books and this one slides safely (without a throw)into the top ten.

The writing is generally top notch - truly an honor role of the best: Roger Kahn, Frank DeFord, Peter Gammons, Robert Creamer, George Plimpton - and so many others.

What I loved about this book is that it makes history come alive. Roy Blount's essay isn't about how great Reggie Jackson was, Blount writes about how great he IS. Kahn's essay on Stan the Man Musial captures the essence of a Hall of Famer who somehow is an underrated superstar. Red Sox diehard Johnathan Schwartz crafts a vivid, yet heartbreaking account of the 1978 playoff game.

My favorites? Creamer's essay on Vin Scully which includes a brilliant account of Scully broadcasting from a stadium roof during a freezing winter. Dan Okrent's gem revealing the statistical genius of Bill James years before he hit the mainstream.

Oddly, a couple of the more famous pieces, Rick Rilley's "Heaven Help Marge Schott" really does come off as a hatchet-job on a old lady. Bouton's "Son of Ball Four" is a whiney diatribe. However, those are just two clunkers compared with the 50 that are really good.

A great book, up there with "Veeck as Wreck", "Babe", and "Glory of Their Times". A great gift for baseball fans of all ages and at $17 for 500+ pages - a true bargain.

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Baseball Frozen in History

Perhaps the best thing about the book is not the writing itself, but how the writing freezes teams, players, and moments in time to allow the reader to sense and experience the emotion of the past. Obviously, in a collection of works that spans 50+ years and is entitled "Great Baseball Writing," the reader is treated to some of the best work ever penned about America's Pastime.

Whether the focal point is Ted Williams' post-baseball fishing prowess, Billy Martin, Stan Musial in decline, Vin Scully on the rise, the Philadelphia A's of the 20s or the Oakland A's of the 70s, each of the dozens of stories are tough to set aside and, if age allows, recall some wonderful memories about the game.

The book is divided into sections covering individual players, teams, other figures and events, and all-time greats. No matter your rooting interests, favorite players or most hated rivals, each story from beginning to end succeeds in getting that internal clock started -- the one that counts down each winter to pitchers and catchers.

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Baseball heaven!

As a fan of the game and of Sports Illustrated I was pleasantly suprised by the content and the writing style of the book. Some of the stories brought back memories and others were new to me. I would recommend this book to anyone even, non-lovers of the game.

When Sports Illustrated was launched in 1954, baseball was, indisputable, the national pastime, its stars America's epic heroes, its rivalries the era's mythology. As baseballs fortunes rose and fell over the next 50 years - and then rose again to new heights, drawing more than 65 million fans to ballparks in 2004 - the game never failed to produce great drama and inspired storytelling. This collection is a virtual Hall of Fame from the pages of SI, bringing together the stories of baseball's greatest heroes (Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax) and villains (Ty Cobb, Pete Rose, Denny McLain) and characters (Casey Stengel, Max Patkin, Yogi Berra); its legendary quests (the home run chases of Roger Maris, Hank Aaron, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds; the thrilling pennant races, from the Dodgers - Giants in 1951 to the Yankees-Red Sox in 1978); its world-class writers (Frank Deford, Mark Kram, George Plimpton, Peter Gammons, and Tom Verducci) and its own players writing from the inside about their game (Ted Williams, Jim Brosnan, and Jim Bouton). In the wake of SI's acclaimed Fifty Years of Great Writing comes this baseball anthology worthy of Cooperstown.

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