Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies, and Everything Else (Paperback)

by Rob Neyer (Author)
Key Phrases: walk rate, batting race, Red Sox, National League, World Series (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The latest and greatest in ESPN.com baseball guru Rob Neyer's
Big Book series, Legends is a highly entertaining guide to baseball fables that
have been handed down through generations.

The well-told baseball story has long been a staple for baseball fans. In Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends, Neyer breathes new life into both classic and obscure stories throughout twentieth-century baseball -- stories that, while engaging on their own, also tell us fascinating things about their main characters and about the sport's incredibly rich history. With his signature style, Rob gets to the heart of every anecdote, working through the particulars with careful research drawn from a variety of primary sources. For each story, he asks: Did this really happen? Did it happen, sort of? Or was the story simply the wild invention of someone's imagination? Among the scores of legends Neyer questions and investigates...

• Did an errant Bob Feller pitch really destroy the career of a National League All-Star?
• Did Greg Maddux mean to give up a long blast to Jeff Bagwell?
• Was Fred Lynn the clutch player he thinks he was?
• Did Tommy Lasorda have a direct line to God?
• Did Negro Leaguer Gene Benson really knock Indians second baseman Johnny Berardino out of baseball and into General Hospital?
• Did Billy Martin really outplay Jackie Robinson every time they met?
• Oh, and what about Babe Ruth's "Called Shot"?

Rob checks each story, separates the truths from the myths, and places their fascinating characters into the larger historical context. Filled with insider lore and Neyer's sharp wit and insights, this is an exciting addition to a superb series and an essential read for true fans of our national pastime.

About the Author
Rob Neyer has written about baseball for ESPN.com since 1996 and appears regularly on ESPNews. He has written four baseball books, including The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (with Bill James) and Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups. His website, www.robneyer.com, contains additional material related to this and his other books.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Fireside (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743284909
• ISBN-13: 978-0743284905
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #194,444 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Entertaining Read -- Probably Neyer's Best Book, March 29, 2008

By	Hal Jordan "A reader" (USA) - See all my reviews

This is the third of Neyer's "Big Books" and, I think, the best. (His Big Book of Baseball Lineups and Big Book of Baseball Blunders are also quite good - as is his lesser known Feeding the Green Monster; The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers is his one clinker.) In this book, he takes a large number of baseball "legends" and discusses whether or not they are true. I put legends in quotation marks because, although he includes an account of whether Babe Ruth really called that home run during the 1932 World Series and a few other famous incidents, most of the entries are really more stories than legends. Many are from autobiographies, newspaper or magazine stories, or sometimes just casual remarks made by television or radio play-by-play announcers. I really like Neyer's approach. Rather than just tell us what someone claims Bob Feller or Willie McCovey or Bob Gibson said or did, and then give us a quick summary of the results of his research - which would have resulted in a pretty short book - he takes several pages to relate what information is available to check the story, the blind alleys he went up, and the different approaches he took to confirm or refute the story. This more leisurely approach gives the reader a good feel for the variety of sources that exist for doing research on the history of baseball and also provides more context for each story - most of which are really not about earthshaking events. As it turns out, most of the stories he checks were at least roughly true, with only a relatively few apparently having been made up out of whole cloth.

One caveat: like many books of this sort, this one is best read a few entries at a time spread out over a couple of weeks, rather than in one sitting. Finally, I found his discussion of Lawrence Ritter's oral history of early twentieth century baseball, The Glory of Their Times, to be particularly interesting. Although Ritter claimed that his book reproduced his interviews with baseball's early stars with very little editing, in fact, after comparing the book to CDs of the interviews Neyer finds that Ritter did substantial rewriting. Although Neyer argues that on balance Ritter's improving the old players' reminiscences was acceptable, I think it raises some interesting questions about the distinctions between a "good story" and a "true story" - which, I suppose, is the distinction that lies at the heart of Neyer's book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read for the baseball enthusiast!, July 17, 2008

By	lovin' sports (Bolton, MA) - See all my reviews

This is the perfect gift for the man or woman you know who has enjoyed baseball all of their lives. Whether reading about the famous players or actually having lived during their times, it brings it all vividly home to the reader. There are wonderful anecdotes and stories and scenes painted for those legends that grow only stronger over time.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fickle memories , June 15, 2008

By	David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is certainly an enjoyable book--but take it in small doses! It does a fine job--anecdotally--of addressing the problems of memory and embellishment and "improving" on stories. There are about 60 chapters, each of which presents a story--usually a recollection from a book about how player X did this-and-that. Neyer then tries to check out the validity--the internet and other resources are a great help. So, for example, Tris Speaker says that the Indians were leading the Yankees by 1 run in the 9th inning, the Yankees had the tying run on second base, and George Uhle issued an intentional walk to Mark Koenig in order to pitch to Babe Ruth. Neyer is able to use the internet and other resources to check the story out. There was a game--with Speaker getting an intentional walk, and with the score 3-1 (in Cleveland's favor) in the 8th inning, Combs singled, Koenig walked, and Ruth flied out. So memory here is partially correct, but also partially quite faulty.

In addition to the 60-so chapters, most chapters have margin stories that may relate to the story in the chapter. So the total number of tales looked at is probably about 150 to 200. Many of these are fascinating, but some are not so memorable. There are a few errors--there's a "Last Note of Humility" about Chance and Harper, which belongs with an earlier chapter, for example. The most troubling tale (which I had never heard before) is "Lou Gehrig & The Imposter" about how Gehrig's consecutive-game streak had been broken, with Danny Kaye wearing Gehrig's uniform. Neyer tracks down the story to a men's magazine and finds a piece by Scribbly Tate describing the events. Scribbly Tate--an obvious pseudonym--is Rob Neyer himself, using his favorite alter-ego: he received $[...] for the story in 1951. "a tale whose origin lies in the most deceitful corner of my own forgetful mind" is how he describes it. I wondered whether Neyer was pulling our legs here--but a Google search reveals that Scribbly Tate is indeed Neyer's favorite pseudonym. I would have liked to have seen some additional analysis--what other tales did Scribbly Tate spin? Overall, though, what you get is a good and enjoyable addition to your baseball library, even if it does pop a few of your favorite misconceptions.