The Ultimate Baseball Book: Second Edition [Paperback]

Daniel Okrent (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 18, 1991

A baseball lover's dream, combining superb essays, a comprehensive history of the sport, and more than 800 photos with captions.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With a line-up of essayists that includes Red Smith, Robert Creamer, Wilfred Sheed, and Tom Wicker, this coffee-table volume, which separates the game's rich history into decades, reached all-star status the day it debuted almost 20 years ago. It is literate and literary, but so are many of baseball's best books; no other one connects its words with its hundreds of photographs in such an elegant double-play.

Review

"A transcendent volume that shows why baseball's hold on our national imagination remains unique." (The New York Times )

"I am bewitched by The Ultimate Baseball Book." (Sports Illustrated )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 394 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (November 18, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395596971
• ISBN-13: 978-0395596975
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 8.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #375,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great historical volume on the greatest game we play., October 3, 2000

By 

sc_demandred (Irvine, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ultimate Baseball Book: Second Edition (Paperback)

The version of this that I read was published in 1981, so it's a tad out of date, but the most compelling parts of the book are doubtless still present in later versions. This book makes a bold claim, and while I don't know that there can be any single Ultimate book on baseball, this one comes reasonably close.

The book splits itself into nine "innings" (though newer versions may have changed this format), splitting baseball history into nine segments and accompanying each historical section with an excellent essay on subjects pertaining to the relevant era. Some of the essays are on subjects like Enos Slaughter's Gas House style of play with the Cardinals, or Fenway Park, or the Brooklyn Dodgers of old, or Connie Mack. In all, the history is pretty thorough and very enjoyable for fans of the game.

Most baseball books are written with a nasty, thinly-veiled contempt for the contemporary game of baseball. "Too many home runs", these authors sniff, "not enough hit-and run". TUBB has none of this attitude present in the historical bits, though it does come through in some of the essays. In the latter innings of the book, the historical chapters describe the evolution of the game very ably, and even suggest that the modern game is more interesting and balanced than ever before, due to the all-around athleticism of many players.

I'm borrowing the 1981 edition of TUBB from my dad, but I will probably buy the Expanded and Updated 2000 version for myself. This is a great book for baseball fans, especially those of us whose earliest baseball memories involve people like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Dwight Gooden... it's good for us whippersnappers to learn some history.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest and most influential baseball books ever, December 20, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ultimate baseball book (Paperback)

The ttiel sounds a tad off-putting, but the book delivers. It's an excellent combination of narrative history, idiosyncratic essays and beautiful photos about the national pastime. The style has been often duplicated since but never equalled