The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball: An All-Star Lineup Celebrates America's National Pastime [Hardcover]

John Thorn (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2004

Batters up! Here are the heavy hitters of baseball writing and reporting, the raconteurs and the players of America’s favorite game, all in one big, entertaining volume that no fan can do without.

The featured luminaries include Zane Grey, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyan, W.P. Kinsella, Red Smith, Tim McCarver, Pete Rose, and George Will, and they all weigh in with wit and an obvious love of the sport. Many offer a fascinating glimpse into baseball’s history, such as Walt Whitman, who reports on a rugged game played even before the Civil War. Russell Baker provides lessons on the art of firing, “learned at the knee of Mr. Steinbrenner.” An excerpt from Jim Bouton’s groundbreaking classic Ball Four examines the sport’s unrelenting power over him: “You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” With these stories and essays, baseball buffs will relive important moments, such as Candy Cummings’ perfecting the first curve ball, baseball’s drawing the color line in 1887, and Bob Carroll’s uncovering Nate Colbert’s hidden RBI record in 1972.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The wonderfully substantial one-volume reissue of the two all-star volumes that made up the Armchair books of baseball is cause to fire up electronic scoreboards throughout the land. The line-up of writers is monumental: Roger Angell, John Updike, Robert Fitzgerald, Gay Talese, James A. Michener, Wilfred Sheed, Russell Baker, Irwin Shaw, and that's just scratching the surface of Volume I. The sequel calls up Walt Whitman, E.L. Doctorow, Willie Morris, Grantland Rice, Fred Lieb, John Lardner, Garrison Keillor, Damon Runyon, Philip Roth, and--the Babe Ruth of them all, from Stratford in the old Elizabethan League--Bill Shakespere. Shakespeare? Sure. What sport do you think he was commenting on with lines like "I will run no base," "Now let's have a catch," "What foul play had we?" and "And so I shall catch the fly"?

In any volume of this size and scope, there are, of course, a few selections worth skipping over, but what's remarkable is just how many are worth savoring: Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Pat Jordan on his own minor league career, Angell on one of the greatest college games ever played, Stephen J. Gould on the extinction of the .400 hitter, and a short story from former bush-league outfielder Zane "Riders of the Purple Sage" Grey--yes, that Zane Grey. Like foul lines diverging in the distance, you'll wish the The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball went on forever. --Jeff Silverman

Product Details

• Hardcover: 848 pages
• Publisher: Galahad (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578660041
• ISBN-13: 978-1578660049
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.7 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,091,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great, May 9, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball: An All-Star Lineup Celebrates America's National Pastime (Hardcover)

best baseball collection. has zane grey and walt whitman all the way to garrison keillor on prairie home companion and neil karlen in rolling stone. and angell of course.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Peter Gammons, Bill James and Moe Berg, too!, March 8, 2005

By 

Dave Schwinghammer "Dave Schwinghammer" (Little Falls, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball: An All-Star Lineup Celebrates America's National Pastime (Hardcover)

I'm the type who would buy the Baseball Encyclopedia every couple of years. I ordered Armchair I and Armchair II when they were first available from BOMC.

The Armchair books are coffee table books that include articles by such familiar personages as Peter Gammons, Jimmy Cannon, and Bill James, but there are some real gems such as the article by Moe Berg, written in 1941. Berg may have been the smartest man to ever play baseball. He knew a dozen languages, graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and was a spy during WWII.

If you haven't read Jim Bouton's BALL FOUR, which editor John Thorn calls, "The best baseball book ever written principally by a player," ARMCHAIR includes an excerpt. For the uninitiated, this was one of the first "tell all" books about what happens behind the scenes. The baseball world never forgave Bouton. To this day, he is not invited to old timers' games.

Ever wonder why so many intellectuals love baseball? A. Bart Giamatti, former commissioner and president of Yale University, may be able to explain it in "The Green Fields of the Mind." Want to know what happened to Shoeless Joe after he was kicked out of the majors? W.P. Kinsella will show you in "Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa." Even conservative columnist George Will contributes with his "The Chicago Cubs, Overdue."

If you love baseball but don't have enough time to read, volume I alone offers a choice of over sixty-one engrossing articles.

4.0 out of 5 stars Who's on First?, September 25, 2010

By 

Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball: An All-Star Lineup Celebrates America's National Pastime (Hardcover)

I had earlier read "The Armchair Book of Baseball" from which emerged "The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball". Baseball has a great history, numerous players of note, storied teams, amazing trivia, and a legion of authors who wrote of the sport or included aspects of the sport in their novels or articles. Editor John Thorn had the challenging pleasure of selecting the entries from the seemingly infinite source to pick from. It probably didn't take him too long to realize there was enough to issue this expanded version. Some of the articles are included for their artistic quality, some for their humorous quality, some for their historical quality, some for their esoteric triviality, and some for their unique approach to the subject which is always, of course, Baseball. Thorn even throws in a ranting by Andy Rooney about why Football is such a great sport and why Baseball is for losers. It's inclusion works because those of us who have read the 700+ pages leading up to the article know better.

I chose to read every entry and I was glad I did. I might have skipped over some of the better articles because the subject didn't interest me. However, I usually ended up with a new interest in the player, manager, or whatever. In my opinion, there were a few articles that Thorn could have left out. The few that come to mind are the several follow-up attempts on "Casey at the Bat" and a couple of efforts to include Shakespeare by listing Baseball-like phrases from the bard's plays.

Many newcomers to the literature of Baseball will benefit from discovering the many Baseball authors whose works are included. Many knowledgeable Baseball enthusiasts may discover new aspects of the game's history like the article about Black players in the major leagues many decades before Jackie Robinson. There are lots of articles written by the players themselves. All in all, "The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball" has more than everything that most enthusiasts of the sport will need.