@EasyAce
Thanks for responding. I have done some of the things you suggested, but I find that there's a certain baseball-speak that is used by many who are steeped in the knowledge of the game that whiz right past us novices. Even so, I'm tapping into sites, reading articles, Googling stuff and watching videos as much as possible. I listen to our announcers (love them!) as they call the game, but there's still much that goes over my head or leaves me with additional questions.
@Jazzhead I've been watching and loving baseball ever since I was six years old---when my maternal grandfather took me to the old Polo Grounds to see the Original Mets. (Yes, considering that team and its comic calamity, there may be those who'd have considered doing that child abuse. But everything you may ever have heard about them is absolutely true: it
was like Abbott pitching to Costello, with the four Marx Brothers covering the infield [I don't recall for dead last certain but I think Groucho's on first, Harpo's on second, Chico's on third, and Zeppo in the I-don't-give-a-darn position), the Three Stooges in the outfield, the Harlem Globetrotters in the bullpen, the Keystone Kops on the bench, and Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton on the coaching lines.) Lots of teams have sucked? The Original Mets sucked . . . with
style.
So, yes, I have been a Met fan since the day they were born (rumour has it that lifelong Met fans are eligible for disability benefits, but I have yet to see that confirmed)
and a Boston Red Sox fan since the 1967 pennant race. (These were the ancient days when man's imagination ranneth not to the concept of more than three major networks, one public television network, a couple of indie networks in the second string---in my New York is was DuMont's successor Metromedia on Channel 5, WOR-TV on Channel 9who just so happened to carry the Mets---and WPIX, Channel 11, in those years the Yankees' station---and UHF, on which you could pick up out-of-area stations if the currents were right, and in 1967 I was picking up so many Red Sox games as they surprised one and all but getting into the pennant race for keeps that I became a fan.) Would you like to see my class-A drug bills from October 1986?
Don't let baseball-speak unnerve you. As you learn it and master it, you will discover two things: 1) It's a glorious language, when 2) it isn't overrun by cliches that actually injure as much as instruct. (
I wrote about baseball's language recently.)
Some of the books in the baseball half of my home library include:
Roger Angell,
Five Seasons,
Late Innings,
Season Ticket,
Once More Around the Park, and
Game Time. Splendid anthologies of the New Yorker essays that ultimately made him the first non-newspaper or daily baseball writer to be inducted into the writers' wing of the Hall of Fame.
Allen Barra,
Clearing the Bases and
Brushbacks and Knockdowns---Two collections of Barra's exquisitely logical self-instigated debates on assorted baseball questions. (Including a classic argument that the answer is:
He said ninety percent of the game is mental and the other half is physical, with the question being,
Who was the single greatest team player in baseball and in any sport in the 20th Century?)
Thomas Boswell,
How Life Imitates the World Series,
Why Time Begins on Opening Day,
The Heart of the Order,
Game Day, and
Cracking the Show---Anthologies of the third best baseball columnist of the 20th Century who's still pretty sharp.
David Claerbaut,
Durocher's Cubs: The Best Team That Didn't Win---A splendid analysis of why the 1969 Cubs blew the National League East in divisional play's first year.
Wayne Coffey,
They Said It Couldn't Be Done---An equally splendid analysis of why the 1969 Mets didn't blow the NL East . . . and went all the way to a surreal World Series triumph.
Robert W. Creamer,
Stengel: His Life and Times; and, Steven Goldman,
Forging Genius: The Making of Casey Stengel---Two books that tell you everything you need to know to debunk any lingering sentiment that just
anyone could have managed and won with the 1949-1960 Yankees. And neither book neglects Stengel the character, either.
Jay Jaffe,
The Cooperstown Casebook---The single best analysis I've ever read (and you'll ever read) of the Hall of Fame.
William C. Kashatus,
September Swoon---How and why the 1964 Phillies blew the pennant they had in their hip pockets and then never really contended again for the rest of the 1960s. Also recommended: Kashatus's biography of Dick Allen, those Phillies' most controversial and completely misunderstood player.
Ring Lardner,
Lardner on Baseball and
The Lost Journalism of Ring Lardner---Gathers his classic and forgotten (but imperative) baseball writing.
Keith Law,
Smart Baseball; and, Brian Kenny,
Ahead of the Curve---The two best books I've ever read about sabermetrics and advanced baseball analysis.
Jane Leavy,
Sandy Koufax---The best biography you'll ever read about a pitcher who lived up to his legend on the mound and was (and is) an even better man off it.
Rob Neyer,
Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders---The single best gathering of some of the game's classic foul-ups, bleeps, blunders, and boners. (And we don't mean Merkle's Boner, either . . . )
George Plimpton,
One for the Record---Plimpton's classic account of Henry Aaron's pursuit of and passing Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list.
Shirley Povich,
All Those Mornings at the Post---Posthumous anthology of the second-best baseball columnist of the 20th Century.
Michael Shapiro,
Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball From Itself---The story of Rickey's bid to form a third major league after the Dodgers and Giants left New York, and how it had ramificatoins for baseball well into the future.
Red Smith,
Red Smith on Baseball---Posthumous collection anthologising perhaps the best baseball columnist of the 20th Century.
Neil J. Sullivan,
The Dodgers Move West; and, Michael Shapiro,
The Last Good Season---The real story of the Dodgers' leaving New York, and it wasn't just Walter O'Malley on a gold rush, either.
Jason Turnbow,
Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic---The best book you'll ever read about Charlie Finley and the 1970s Oakland Athletics.
Tom Verducci,
The Best of Tom Verducci---An anthology of perhaps
Sports Illustrated's best contemporary baseball writer.
George F. Will,
Men at Work,
Bunts, and
A Nice Little Place on the North Side---The first is Will's dive into the inner workings of baseball, those who play and manage it, and the minds behind it; the second, a collection of the baseball columns he wrote to break up the monotony of covering such lesser pursuits as politics and government; the third, his love letter to Wrigley Field on its centenary. (He grew up a Cub fan, the poor soul.
Bunts includes the two columns that would ultimately be mashed up into the much-anthologised "The Chicago Cubs, Overdue.")
