Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book is excellent for any type of baseball fan. It has wonderful photos with excellent information. It is truly a worth-wild buy for baseball fans, no matter what the age!