Customer Reviews

Great Moments in Baseball

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Author David Craft suggests in his intro to GREAT MOMENTS IN BASEBALL that this brief photo essayer is best-suited to those just beginning a study of baseball history, and he's absolutely correct in this. For those with any knowledge of the sport, both the topics covered here and their accompanying photos will be all-too familiar.

In selective and rapid-fire manner, Craft devotes a half-page (or less) to the first World Series (1903), Merkle's boner (1908), the Black Sox scandal (1919), Bill Wambsganss' unassisted World Series triple play (1920), Murderer's Row (1927), Babe Ruth "calling his shot" (1932), the end of Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak (1939), and so on, right through 1995.

Due to a 75 page format, absent are the exploits of Ty Cobb, Dizzy Dean, Hank Greenberg, Don Drysdale, Ralph Kiner, Ron Guidry, Maury Wills, Walter Johnson, Carl Yastrzemski and Whitey Ford, nor is any mention made of the 1949 AL pennant race or the NY/Boston 1978 playoff game. Curiously, space IS devoted to the Milwaukee Brewers and Toronto Blue Jays.

GREAT MOMENTS IN BASEBALL would make an ideal bathroom reader and little else, for it doesn't offer much beyond two minute glimpses of a few dozen salient events in "America's Favorite Pastime." As both history and photo book, it's too spotty to be anything more.

Ken Burns' BASEBALL: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY is one of the finest sports photo books available. Co-authored with Geoffrey C. Ward, this is the companion to the famous PBS BASEBALL documentary series of the 1990s.