The Ultimate Baseball Book

Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest and most influential baseball books ever
Review: The ttiel sounds a tad off-putting, but the book delivers. It's an excellent combination of narrative history, idiosyncratic essays and beautiful photos about the national pastime. The style has been often duplicated since but never equalled

Rating:
Summary: A great historical volume on the greatest game we play.
Review: The version of this that I read was published in 1981, so it's a tad out of date, but the most compelling parts of the book are doubtless still present in later versions. This book makes a bold claim, and while I don't know that there can be any single Ultimate book on baseball, this one comes reasonably close.

The book splits itself into nine "innings" (though newer versions may have changed this format), splitting baseball history into nine segments and accompanying each historical section with an excellent essay on subjects pertaining to the relevant era. Some of the essays are on subjects like Enos Slaughter's Gas House style of play with the Cardinals, or Fenway Park, or the Brooklyn Dodgers of old, or Connie Mack. In all, the history is pretty thorough and very enjoyable for fans of the game.

Most baseball books are written with a nasty, thinly-veiled contempt for the contemporary game of baseball. "Too many home runs", these authors sniff, "not enough hit-and run". TUBB has none of this attitude present in the historical bits, though it does come through in some of the essays. In the latter innings of the book, the historical chapters describe the evolution of the game very ably, and even suggest that the modern game is more interesting and balanced than ever before, due to the all-around athleticism of many players.

I'm borrowing the 1981 edition of TUBB from my dad, but I will probably buy the Expanded and Updated 2000 version for myself. This is a great book for baseball fans, especially those of us whose earliest baseball memories involve people like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Dwight Gooden... it's good for us whippersnappers to learn some history.

Rating:
Summary: A great historical volume on the greatest game we play.
Review: The version of this that I read was published in 1981, so it's a tad out of date, but the most compelling parts of the book are doubtless still present in later versions. This book makes a bold claim, and while I don't know that there can be any single Ultimate book on baseball, this one comes reasonably close.

The book splits itself into nine "innings" (though newer versions may have changed this format), splitting baseball history into nine segments and accompanying each historical section with an excellent essay on subjects pertaining to the relevant era. Some of the essays are on subjects like Enos Slaughter's Gas House style of play with the Cardinals, or Fenway Park, or the Brooklyn Dodgers of old, or Connie Mack. In all, the history is pretty thorough and very enjoyable for fans of the game.

Most baseball books are written with a nasty, thinly-veiled contempt for the contemporary game of baseball. "Too many home runs", these authors sniff, "not enough hit-and run". TUBB has none of this attitude present in the historical bits, though it does come through in some of the essays. In the latter innings of the book, the historical chapters describe the evolution of the game very ably, and even suggest that the modern game is more interesting and balanced than ever before, due to the all-around athleticism of many players.

I'm borrowing the 1981 edition of TUBB from my dad, but I will probably buy the Expanded and Updated 2000 version for myself. This is a great book for baseball fans, especially those of us whose earliest baseball memories involve people like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Dwight Gooden... it's good for us whippersnappers to learn some history.