Baseball Anecdotes RI

Here is a treasury of great stories from the game of baseball. Collected and ordered from the 1800's down to today. You see some of the great characters from the game, and a look back to simpler times. Some very amusing stories are sure to keep you interested.

Daniel Okrent and Steve Wulf have compiled over 300 pages of major league anecdotes and trivia, dating from pre-Civil War to the modern era. The authors begin with Alexander Cartright and Abner DoubleDay, and just keep on going. There's a lot here in these readable pages, from personalities like Cap Anson, Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Willie Mays, Pete Rose, etc., to some of the more more successful and more colorful teams, key World Series', etc. The book covers each era, from the post-civil war teams of the later 1800's, to the dead ball era, the roaring 1920's, the Depression and War years, postwar baseball, expansion, etc. Hard core fans will recognize many of the anecdotes, but there's so many here that some are bound to be new. Actually, I wish the authors had included more pages of information, but this still makes good reading for baseball fans.

Thinking fans should also read Okrent's NINE INNINGS, a dated but superb look at baseball and baseball strategy.

This book is truly the best historical baseball book you could possibly read, in my opinion not intended to be read cronologically but rather reading the anecdotes whenever you feel like it, it's funny, charismatic and it would make an incredible gift for the true baseball fan, it's for kids, adults, seniors and everyone who really apprecciates baseball like I do

For those of us who love the history of baseball as much as the game itself, this is a, "must get".

I found all the anecdotes from the PBS Ken Burns documentary "Baseball" here plus a bunch that didn't make it. (You may recall, that Daniel Okrent was heavily featured in the PBS series)

The only missing element that would cause me to bump my ratings to 5 stars would be(you guessed it) photos.

With the unearthing of Charles Conlon's negatives they would have a trove of other 18,000 images to choose from - most of which have yet to be published in this half of the century. (Only a fraction of these incredible images made it into the Abram's book, "The Golden Age of Baseball")

Of course, this would drive the cost of the book up and possibly detract from the wonderful stories here - I wonder out loud if it isn't perfect just the way it is...

Never the less, you will be all the poorer if this book in not in your baseball library, photos or not!