Baseball: A Literary Anthology [Hardcover]

Nicholas Dawidoff (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Library of America | Publication Date: February 28, 2002

Robert Frost never felt more at home in America than when watching baseball "be it in park or sand lot." Full of heroism and heartbreak, the most beloved of American sports is also the most poetic, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents the story of the national adventure as revealed through the fascinating lens of the great American game.

Philip Roth considers the terrible thrill of the adolescent centerfielder; Richard Ford listens to minor-league baseball on the radio while driving cross-country; Amiri Baraka remembers the joy of watching the Newark Eagles play in the era before Jackie Robinson shattered the color line. Unforgettable portraits of legendary players who have become icons-Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Hank Aaron-are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn't hit in any of them."

Poems in Baseball: A Literary Anthology include indispensable works whose phrases have entered the language-Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Franklin P. Adams's "Baseball's Sad Lexicon"-as well as more recent offerings from May Swenson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Martin Espada. Testimonies from classic oral histories offer insights into the players who helped enshrine the sport in the American imagination. Spot reporting by Heywood Broun and Damon Runyon stands side by side with journalistic profiles that match baseball legends with some of our finest writers: John Updike on Ted Williams, Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Red Smith on Lefty Grove.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Dawidoff, the author of a well-regarded biography of Moe Berg (The Catcher Was a Spy), has assembled this collection of exemplary baseball writing. While acknowledging the literature's formative years with early boosters such as Albert Spalding and other "dead ball" era writers, he concentrates on its mature period, from Ring Lardner through the two Rogers (Kahn and Angell) of the modern era, even Don Delillo and Stephen King. Dawidoff smartly doesn't rule out a great piece of baseball writing merely because it's familiar: classics like Updike's account of Ted Williams's final 1960 game, Gay Talese's Esquire profile of the unknowable Joe DiMaggio, and W.C. Heinz's salute to the recklessly brave Pistol Pete Reiser belong in any anthology worth its pitching rosin. This wonderful introduction belongs alongside past collections such as The Armchair Guide to Baseball.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Like an all-star team, an anthology often falls short of achieving perfection. There's nearly always that lack of cohesion, or the nagging thought that someone crucial was left off the roster. But this collection is so rich, so stuffed with old friends and newly remembered gems, so chock-full of beautiful and shapely writing. Beginning with Thayer's Casey at the Bat and ending with Buster Olney, there are more than 700 pages of prose and poetry, fiction and sportswriting, writers and players. Scanning the table of contents, it almost seems like everybody wrote about baseball: Damon Runyon, Ring Lardner, James Weldon Johnson, William Carlos Williams, James Thurber. But so did Paul Gallico, Nelson Algren, Tallulah Bankhead, and Jacques Barzun. Satchel Paige's Rules for Staying Young is right there with Keith Hernandez's Pure Baseball; Roger Angell's prose and Marianne Moore's poetry gleam and glisten; Giamatti's Green Fields of the Mind, perhaps the loveliest short piece ever written on baseball, glows. The food writer Molly O'Neill writes a delicious essay about her little brother, Paul--he just retired from the Yankees--and the editor himself limns a piece in the introduction about his grandfather as perfectly as a strike-three call. Ineffable, indispensable, inimitable--just like baseball. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 721 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (February 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193108209X
• ISBN-13: 978-1931082099
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #285,637 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for the season, perfect for the off-season, October 4, 2002

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Stamford, Connecticut) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Baseball: A Literary Anthology (Hardcover)

When Ted Williams died a few months ago, someone described "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," John Updike's chronicle of Williams' final game, as "the most perfect piece of sports writing ever." I looked for it in this collection, and there it was. When the baseball season ended last week (for us Mariners fans, anyway), another friend quoted Bart Giamatti's famous elegy that begins, "It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart." Like they say about the spaghetti sauce, "It's in there."

More than any other sport, I think, baseball seems to inspire writing that's lyrical without being cheesy or cloying. That much is apparent in this collection, which also treats us to "Casey at the Bat" (naturally), Owen Johnston, Ring Lardner, Nelson Algren, Jimmy Breslin, Roger Angell, and much more (but, I observe without comment, no George Will). When my lovely bride gave me this collection back in June, I knew it would be a perfect companion for the season. Now I'm finding it an even better companion for the still young off-season. So as we try to figure out how many days are left until pitchers and catchers report to spring training, this great collection of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and prose will carry us forward, and back, to summer.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a truly great read!, April 28, 2002

By 

David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Baseball: A Literary Anthology (Hardcover)

Baseball: A Literary Anthology edited by Nicholas Dawidoff and published by The Library of America offers a lively mix of stories, memoirs, poems, news reports, and insider accounts about all aspects of the great American game, from its pastoral nineteenth-century beginnings to its apotheosis as the undisputed national pastime.

Among the contributions are the works of Ring Lardner, Don DeLillo, sportswriters Damon Runyon & Red Smith, and poets William Carlos Williams & Yusef Komunyakaa. Included are essays and player profiles from John Updike, Gay Talese, Roger Angell, and David Remnick.

Baseball: A Literary Anthology is a varied and exuberant display of what baseball has meant to American writers. Among the highlights: Philip Roth considers the terrible thrill of the adolescent centerfielder; Richard Ford listens to minor league baseball on the radio while driving cross-country; Amiri Baraka remembers the joy of watching the Newark Eagles play Negro League ball; Stephen King follows his son's team on their riveting journey toward a Little League championship.

Bringing together tales of ambition and heartbreak, childlike wonder and implacable disappointment, raw strength and even rawer emotion, Baseball: A Literary Anthology tells a rich and vital story about the sport that has always been more than just a game in the hearts of Americans.

In an age where venal, shorsighted men seem bent on destroying the game, reading this book gives one perspective: Such men have always existed--and failed. This stands, then, as a book of remembrance, reflection and hope. It's just what baseball-and baseball fans-need.

This is a truly great read!

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Play ball!"...and Cherish It, April 10, 2002

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Baseball: A Literary Anthology (Hardcover)

In The Business of America, John Steele Gordon explains that, "Like all great team sports, baseball arose spontaneously from the human race's collective genius for play. Its ultimate origins lie in a game called rounders, played by village boys in England since time immemorial. Variations of rounders were known in both England and America by many other names, and one called baseball is even mentioned by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey, written about 1798." Dawidoff has edited a literary anthology which, in my opinion, is the best single collection of writing about baseball as has yet been published. Even for long-time, passionate fans such as I, the fact many of the authors represented are unfamiliar adds even greater value to Dawidoff's 721-page anthology. That is to say, there are adventures of discovery in this superb collection...discoveries of voices perhaps not heard before as well as discoveries of situations previously unknown to most of us.

Appropriately, the first selection is Thayer's "Casey at the Bat." I never weary of reading it or of hearing someone recite it. Corny? Of course. I hasten to add, Dawidoff also includes brilliant commentaries by those sports journalists most closely identified with baseball (e.g. Runyon, Lardner, Rice, Smith, Gallico, and Angell) as well as Satchell Paige's delightful selection, "Rules for Staying Young." As I think about this book, the word "feast" comes to mind; also the word "buffet." The authors offer a wide and deep combination of perspectives on what remains our national pastime. Although I am appalled by so much which is apparently essential to Major League Baseball today (especially greed and the inevitable victim of it, loyalty), I have not as yet lost my faith in the game's essential integrity. I still get goose bumps when I emerge from a walkway and first see the lush green field. Later, the crack of a bat, the roar of a crowd in response. Hot dogs, cold beer, popcorn and peanuts (if not Cracker Jack). The uniquely thrilling excitement of an inside-the-park home run, a triple play, a steal of home. Years ago, a graduate school professor of mine suggested that a myth is something that never was and always will be. That is my view of baseball in its purest forms, a view encouraged by this remarkable book.