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Something to Write Home About
Sports Book Review

by Harvey Frommer

A member of the Society for American Baseball Research
more info

The idea was simple. Contact celebrities who are also baseball fans and have them reminisce about the national pastime. The look content, impact of "Something to Write Home About " by Seth Swirsky (Crown, $25.95, 191 pages) is stunningly memorable.

There are two hundred photographs, memorabilia and a moving collection of letters (some hand-written )from such as Presidents George W. Bush, George Bush, Paul McCartney, Tom Seaver, Senator Ted Kennedy, Babe Ruth, Jimmy Piersall.

Seth Swirsky is a pop songwriter and the author of "Baseball Letters" and "Every Pitcher Tells a Story." He is at the top of his creative form in this winning volume that you will want to keep in a place of prominence on your sports bookshelf.

Now out in paperback "Now Pitching for the Yankees" by Marty Appel (Sport Classic Books, $13.95, 383 pages) is an inside look into the behind-the-scenes Yankee stuff. Appel spins tale after tale about the Bronx Zoo years as see from his perspective in the front office during that time period. A home run of a book!

From the Lyon Press comes "Classic Baseball Stories" edited by Jeff Silverman 8($9.95, 290 pages, paper). The book features essays on the national pastime from such talents as Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon.

For those with deep rooted interest in the sport "The Hidden Language of Baseball" by Paul Dickson (Walker & Company, $22.00, 228 pages) is worth checking out. Dickson goes into amazing and sometimes amusing detail explicating how sign and sign-stealing have influenced the course of our national pastime.

It a best seller and it is highly acclaimed by critics everywhere. But "Teammates" by David Halberstram (Hyperion, $22.95, 203 pages) is also a testament to how far image and reputation can take one.

The book would have been terrific as a long magazine article. As a book it is a stretch - the recounting by one of my favorite sports authors of the 1,300 mile auto trip made in early October 2,001 by Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky to visit their dying long-time friend and teammate Ted Williams. It is also a recounting of DiMaggio-Pesky-Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams and their shining time as Boston Red Sox. The book has many moments of eloquence, moving perceptions. But the slim "Teammates" could have benefited from some kind of table of contents, an index and much more content.

"A haphazard primer" is the kindest phrase I can use to describe Rob Neyer's "Big Book of Baseball Lineups: A Guide to the Best, Worst, and Most Memorable Players to Ever Grace the Major Leagues (Fireside, $16.00, 352 pages).

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