Baseball Players of the 1950s: A Biographical Dictionary of All 1,560 Major Leaguers

Rating:
Summary: Trivia Heaven
Review: I was so happy to see this book come out! I still have a dog-eared copy of the original version of this (Aaron to Zuverink) published about 20 years ago- talk about fascinating stuff!

I recently embarked on a project of my own to try and obtain the autographs of some of my boyhood idols- I'm 52 now- and this book has proven to be an invaluable source in terms of tracking these gentlemen down. The exhaustive research and amusing tidbits that Messrs. Marazzi and Fiorito have chosen to share give a true insight into the world of baseball at the time- 'Golden Age' indeed!

Rating:
Summary: HOME RUN
Review: Over 150 years ago, John James Audubon published his classic book, "The Birds of America". In it, he cataloged the feathered creatures inhabiting the United States by painting exquisite portraits of every species of wild fowl he could find.

Each painting - whether that of a majestic eagle, or that of a common crow - was a work of art. At the same time, each painting conveyed far more than just a photographic image of its subject matter: They each conveyed the essence of its subject.

Taken as a whole, Audubon's work is nothing less than an encyclopedic portrait of America's myriad feathered inhabitants, and it continues to be appreciated and enjoyed throughout the world to this day.

What Audubon did for North American ornithology in paint, Rich Marazzi and Len Fiorito have done in words for baseball (as constituted by the players from the "golden age" of baseball) in their recently published book with the unassuming title of "Baseball Players of the 1950s".

Whether writing about a famous hall-of-fame baseball god, or a marginal journeyman who did nothing more than show up sober for a couple of innings in the "big leagues" between January of 1950 and December of 1959, Marazzi and Fiorito have breathed life into each of the 1,560 (!) biographies that make up their tome. And remarkably, Marazzi and Fiorito have somehow managed to find fresh and engaging things to say about players whose careers have been written about and analyzed in countless books and articles over the last 50 some odd years. At the same time - even more remarkably - they've also managed to come up with wonderfully readable and insightful blurbs on players whose brief time in the major leagues was not only short, but virtually invisible. And everyone in between is covered and accounted for in equally expert fashion.

Without a doubt, Marazzi and Fiorito's achievement - in its own way - is just as impressive as Audubon's, and "Baseball Players of the 1950s" is a book that baseball fans everywhere - as well as fans of good writing in general - will love and enjoy.