baseball

Hardcover. Chicago, Bonus Books, 2nd pr., 1989, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 317 pages, b&w photos. Happy Chandler was a two-time governor of Kentucky and a U.S. Senator from the same state during World War II. And while most people credit Branch Rickey with integrating baseball, it would not have happened without this special southern politician, Albert "Happy" Chandler being the Commissioner of Baseball at that time. Chandler also had to deal with the raids on star players by the Mexican League, the controversial suspension of Brooklyn Dodger manager Leo Durocher, and the threatened player strike. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Columbia, University of Missouri, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 274 pages, b&w photos. 1942: Americans suddenly found themselves at war but were not about to be distracted from the National Pastime. The Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees were looking to continue their World Series rivalry from the 1941 season, and a youthful team from St. Louis was determined to stop them. With only one player older than thirty, the St. Louis Cardinals were the youngest team to win the National League pennant and World Series. Built on good pitching and tremendous speed on the base paths and in the field, the team featured rookie Stan Musial, future Hall of Famer Enos Slaughter, and ace pitcher Mort Cooper, the National League's Most Valuable Player of 1942. With their winningest season ever, posting 106 victories, the 1942 Redbirds have been called the greatest Cardinal team of all time. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Guilford CT, Lyons Press, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Burned out by working the baseball beat for years, in the summer of 1922 Damon Runyon was looking for a new sport to cover for The New York American as a change of pace. Having pilloried golf just a few years before, he went to Saratoga that August to sample horse racing and found that "There, right in front of him, were so many of the characters he so loved from his time covering the comings and goings of the Manhattan night crowd." This was just the tonic Runyon needed to emerge from his malaise. Runyon didn't just cover the great races and which horse won: he would get to the track days before and roam along the backstretch, speaking with the trainers, the gamblers, the rich owners, and the wise guys, many of which became model characters in his fiction and in the musical Guys and Dolls. This book collects the best of Runyon's horse racing columns to 1936, when he moved on to other beats. 391 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 254, b&w illustrations. A veteran of seven decades of professional baseball reminisces about his days in the Negro Leagues, offers an intimate portrait of Satchel Paige, and reveals his current work scouting for the Kansas City Royals at age eighty-two. Buck O'Neil was a former all-star player and manager for the Kansas City Monarchs; he also has the distinction of being the first black to hold a coaching position in major league baseball. Clean copy.

NY, Sports Illustrated Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Tom Verducci was Sports Illustrated lead baseball writer starting in 1993. Here are 21 of his Best Stories including The Left Hand of God- Sandy Koufax; What is Rickey Henderson Doing in Newardk; The Power of Perdo (Martinez); and Totally Juiced- the effect of steroids on baseball. Introduction by Roger Clemens. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown & Co., 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 47 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Color illusrations by Norm Chartier. Publisher's lending library stamp on front endpaper. Light soil to dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In a stunning feat of meticulous reportage, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ben Cramer ultimately puts to rest the "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" question with iconoclastic bravura. In Cramer's evaluation, the hero America held onto so desperately for so long was really a creation of a nation's communal imagination. The Joe DiMaggio that America tried so hard to believe in was never really here at all. There was, of course, a Joe DiMaggio, and he had a splendid career in Yankee pinstripes--once hitting safely in an unimaginable 56 consecutive games--and a troubled marriage with Marilyn Monroe, each augmenting the other in our national mythology. But myths tend to be skin-deep, and Cramer's biography thrives in an internal geography well below the surface. The map he charts is of a cold, small, often nasty, uncaring, resentful, self-centered man, a man of public grace and private misery who broke friendships, shunned family, and chased money with the same focused energies he once harnessed to run down fly balls.

Softcover. Jefferson NC, McFarland & Company, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 157 pages. In late 1922, Judge Emil Fuchs purchased the woebegone Boston Braves--primarily to bring his ailing friend, Christy Mathewson, back into the game he loved so much. A true fan, Judge Fuchs poured his fortune into the team, intent on giving Boston's long-suffering National League fans a winner. He introduced Ladies' Days, contracted to have Braves games broadcast on radio, and successfully campaigned to allow Sunday baseball in Boston. Moreover, he gave the fans a competitive team, climaxed by the Braves' dramatic pennant race with the New York Giants in 1933.

Hardcover. New York , Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 7th printing, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 306 pages, b&w photos. Light wear, rubbing and sunning to dust jacket. Book itself is very good.

Softcover. Amherst MA, University of Massachusetts Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 323 pages, b&w illustrations. Award-winning sportswriter Marty Dobrow examines the lives of six minor leaguers-Brad Baker, Doug Clark, Manny Delcarmen, Randy Ruiz, Matt Torra, and Charlie Zink-all struggling to make their way to "The Show." What links them together, aside from their common goal, is that they are all represented by the same team of agents-Jim and Lisa Masteralexis and their partner Steve McKelvey-whose own aspirations parallel those of the players they represent. The story begins during spring training in 2005 and ends in the fall of 2008, followed by a brief epilogue that updates each player's fortunes through the 2009 season. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Guilford,CT, The Lyons Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 492 pages. Here for the baseball fan, in one comprehensive volume, are Lardner's finest writings about baseball during its golden age. Out of a column written for The Saturday Evening Post evolved his most famous work, You Know Me, Al, which introduced the world to the bush-league pitcher Jack Keefe. Lardner's skills as the finest American humorist since Mark Twain are on full display in the stories "My Roomy," "Horseshoes," "Alibi Ike," and "The Yellow Kid." Also included are his outstanding journalistic pieces about the Chicago Black Sox World Series scandal of 1919 that chronicle his struggle to come to grips with a national betrayal, the memory of which still scars the sport to this day. LARDNER ON BASEBALL is a full, diverse, and exciting collection of works from a legendary writer who transformed a simple game into the stuff of great literature. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 142 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Illustrated by Ben Stahl. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Ballantine Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Daughter Vernona Gomez honors her late father with a well-researched biography of Yankee great Vernon "Lefty" Gomez. From the time he was a child Lefty wanted to be a baseball player. His strength was in his determination to achieve his goal while at the same time being a willing learner from those who had knowledge to pass on to him. In other words he was coachable and aware of his limitations. Gomez played during the heyday of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and later Joe DiMaggio. Lefty was The Yankee Clipper's roommate for several years, and taught the quiet DiMaggio life in the big leagues. The book provides numerous anecdotes of the Yankee greats of this time period which enrich the book a great deal. Gomez was there when Ruth supposedly called his "shot" in Wrigley Field during the 1932 World Series. He was also there when Gehrig was stricken with illness and had to prematurely retire from the game. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 302 pages. Celebrated Author Roger Angell has warmly Inscribed to an friend and signed on the title page ("For Carl - All best, Roger Angell ". The book contains the childhood baseball recollections from America's premier observer of the world of baseball and life. Angell was the long time contributor to The New Yorker. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Mankato MN, Creative Editions, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. In 1949, SPORT magazine published Lineup for Yesterday, a collection of poems by Ogden Nash celebrating the greatest big-league baseball players of the 1800s and early 1900s. Using an alphabetical approach, the famous wordsmith paid entertaining tribute to 24 legends of the diamond, encapsulating each in just 4 clever lines. Creative Editions is proud to present this masterpiece to a new generation of fans, reintroducing icons from the formative years of professional baseball. The masterful mixed-media illustrations of C. F. Payne portray these heroes of summer in their athletic primes in this, the first-ever picture book publication of Nash s classic. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Warner Books, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with mild fading to spine.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 420 pages, b&w illustrations. Draws on hundreds of new interviews and previously unpublished letters to present a comprehensive account of the life of the Hall of Fame ballplayer whose career was cut short by the disease now named for him, in a portrait that shares background details about his rivalry with Babe Ruth, the onset of his illness, and the final years of his life. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 420 pages, b&w illustrations. Offers a fascinating and well-rounded portrait of Gehrig, from his dugout rituals and historic games to his relationships with his mother, wife, coaches, and teammates. His complex friendship with Ruth, who was the polar opposite to Gehrig in nearly every respect, is given particularly vivid attention. Take this revealing description of how the two men began a barnstorming tour together following their 1927 World Series victory: "Ruth tipped the call girls and sent them on their way. Gehrig kissed his mother goodbye." Eig also shares some previously unknown details regarding his consecutive games streak and how he dealt with ALS during the final years of his life. Rich in anecdotes and based on hundreds of interviews and 200 pages of recently discovered letters, the book effectively shows why the Iron Horse remains an American icon to this day. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Lee and Shepard, 1st, 1904, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 332 pages. Hardcover. Previous owners name on front endpaper. Black & white illustrations by Charles Copeland. Titles on cover and spine in gilt. Fading to spine with beginning of fraying at top and bottom. Clean, unmarked text.Phillips Exeter Series.

Hardcover. Maryland, Scarecrow Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 167 pages. Hardcover with laminate covers. Clean, tight copy. Black and white photographs throughout.

Hardcover. Boston, MA, Lothrop Publishing Company, 1st, 1903, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 291 pages + ads in rear. Tissue-guarded frontispiece. Scarce baseball novel. Green illustrated cloth with baseball player on front cover. Previous owner's inscription in pencil on front end paper and the number 35 scribbled on prelim page with crayon, else a lovely copy with very little wear to covers.

Hardcover. Westport CT, Meckler Books, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with light edgewear. 253 pages, b&w photos. An autobiographical account of his 50-year career in baseball, from his first game as a rookie in the minors to his final game as a manager in the majors. MacPhail discusses his experiences as a player, coach, and manager, as well as his views on the game and his interactions with other players and coaches.

Hardcover. Emmaus PA, Rodale, 2nd pr., 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 322 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY ROSE on half title page. Minor rubbing and edgewear to dust jacket. Bright and clean; a tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Coward-McCann, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with mild edgewear. Scarce copy of this classic account by Hall of Fame baseballer Rogers Hornsby. 253 pages, b&w illustrations. Foreword by Casey Stengel. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean, tight copy.