Any book with Nolan Ryan in his power windup decorating the cover can't be bad. Since I wrote his autobiography, "Throwing Heat," I am partial to the man.
I am also partial to "Baseball's Best Shots" (Dorling Kindersley Publishing/Major League Baseball, $30, 160 pages). This book is a keeper. Rich Pillin, manager, and Paul Cunningham, administrator of Major League Photos, did the photo selection. Thousands of images were considered. The results do not disappoint.
There is a 1950 shot of Joe DiMaggio "boning the bat," using a large beef bone to compress the grain of the wood to make it last longer. There is Hughie Jennings of the Detroit Tigers in a grainy black-and-white shot from 1910, Alex Gonzalez of Toronto in a full color 1998 photo breaking his bat on impact with the ball and Bo Jackson of the Kansas City Royals breaking his bat across his thigh after striking out.
Two facing pages, one captioned "Game Face" and the other "Clown Face" showcase in black-and-white photography a couple of baseball's legendary faces. There is the deadpan visage of "Hack" Wilson, whose 190 RBIs in 1930 is a single-season record, and the highly animated face of a young Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel, who began his big league career in 1912 with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
My favorite photograph is a 1998 double-page shot of the anything-but-sedate bleacher crowd at Wrigley Field. Bare-chested guys dominate the image as they cheer on Sammy Sosa. It is a wondrous photo of smiling fans having fun at the ballpark.
Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, as they should, get good exposure in "Baseball's Best Shots." Most baseball fans probably have seen the caught-in-a-time-warp photographs many times: the Babe embracing a muted Iron Horse on Lou Gehrig Day at Yankee Stadium in 1939, both icons decked out in cowboy uniforms during a 1938 barnstorming tour.
There is also the all-time classic shot that won a Pulitzer Prize: Babe Ruth, cap off, head bowed, in his final appearance at Yankee Stadium in 1948 before his death from cancer.
Ruth, Gehrig, Sosa, McGwire, Honus Wagner, Derek Jeter and so many others are beautifully showcased in "Baseball's Best Shots." An index and more text would have helped. And the book's subtitle, "The Greatest Baseball Photography of All Time" is publisher hyperbole. There is not one photo by the legendary Barney Stein, who captured the magical images of the Brooklyn Dodgers so well.
Nevertheless, this book is compelling stuff.
BOOKENDS: "All Roads Lead To October" by noted author Maury Allen (St. Martin's Press, $24.95, 320 pages) provides an up-close look at the quarter-century tenure of George Steinbrenner. It is a heck of a read!
If pastiche is your dish, then "Pitching Around Fidel" by S.L. Price (Ecco/HarperCollins, $24.00, 279 pages) is a book that will appeal to you. The book ranges far and wide on the topic of sports and culture in Cuba and includes interviews with stars like Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez. (2000)
Also by Harvey Frommer
» Wee Willie Keeler: Good Things Come in Small Packages
» Let's Play Two
» The First World Series
» Sandy Koufax, Out of Brooklyn: Sports Book Review
» The 1919 Black Sox (Part II)
» The 1919 Black Sox (Part I)
» Baseball Books On Parade: Sports Book Review
» Yankee Doodle Dandies: Yankee Books: Sports Book Review
» The Harmonica Incident: August 20, 1964
» "Fenway: A Biography in Words and Pictures": Sports Book Review
» Baseball's Mecca: The Hall of Fame in Cooperstown
» Trade a Player a Year Too Early, Not a Year Too Late
» The Yankee Mystique
» Satchel Paige: World's Greatest Pitcher
» "Red Smith on Baseball": Sports Book Review
» The Barry Halper Collection of Baseball Memorabilia: Sports Book Review
» Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson
» Remembering Irving Rudd
» Subway Series
» Midsummer Classic: Midsummer Mockery
» Yankee Stadium's First Opening Day
» The Birth of Baseball's First Professional Team
» Yankee Stadium's First Opening Day
» Gehrig's Streak
» Willie Mays and the Month of May
» Reese was no Pee Wee
» Yankees vs. Red Sox: Baseball's Greatest Rivalry
» Celebrating Hank Greenberg
» Bobby Thomson's Famous Homer Lives On
» Remembering the Yankee Clipper: Joe DiMaggio
» Shoeless Joe Remains a Scapegoat
» The Mets Have Always Been Amazing
» More submissions
Copyright © 2002 by Harvey Frommer. Posted September 23, 2002.
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