50 Baseball's Great Experiment
BY JULES TYGIEL (1983)
In what the New York Times called a "rich, intelligent cultural history," Tygiel portrays not only Jackie Robinson's breakthrough 1947 season with the Dodgers but also the arduous 12-year march toward integration by all teams in the major leagues.
51 Laughing in the Hills
BY BILL BARICH (1980)
Nearing 40 and faced with the death of his mother and a failing marriage, Barich checks into a hotel near Golden Gate Fields racetrack and stays for the season. As he gambles alongside a flock of railbirds, he becomes, he says in this evocative memoir, "restored if not renewed.
52 Dollar Sign on the Muscle
BY KEVIN KERRANE (1984)
The author spent a year with the Phillies' scouts when they were arguably the best judges of raw talent in the major leagues. The often hard lives of baseball's underpaid hunter-gatherers are rendered in lively detail. (See the decoding of scout-speak in chapter 5.)
53 The Bronx Zoo
BY SPARKY LYLE AND PETER GOLENBOCK (1979)
After this book Lyle was no longer known as just a Cy Young Award-winning reliever; he was the guy who liked to sit bare-assed on teammates' birthday cakes. His hilarious as-told-to proves that a talented team can feud and ego-trip its way to the World Series.[Out of print][ New York Times best-seller]
54 The Professional
BY W.C. HEINZ (1958)
Hemingway called this dialogue-driven portrayal of the monthlong run-up to a championship middleweight bout "the only good novel I've ever read about a fighter." Young Elmore Leonard was so inspired by it that he sent his first (and last) fan letter to Heinz.[Authors with other list-worthy books]
55 The Baseball Encyclopedia
MACMILLAN (PUBLISHER) (1969)
Sure, you can find stats galore on the Internet. But for those who relish paging through career numbers and debating whether Smokey Burgess was better than Ed Bailey, this tome, which is revised every few years, is the final authority.
56 A Savage Business
BY RICHARD HOFFER (1998)
In what kind of world can Mike Tyson emerge from prison to discover that "raping a teenager had turned out to be a great career decision"? Only in the unseemly universe of heavyweight boxing. SI's Hoffer relentlessly peppers the sport with body blows.
57 The Glory of Their Times
BY LAWRENCE RITTER (1966)
Ritter spent six years tracking down professional baseball players from the early 1900s, then stepped aside to let them tell their remarkable stories in their own words. Virtually all of these men are gone now, but thanks to Ritter they'll never be forgotten.
58 The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball
EDITED BY JOHN THORN (1999)
This one-volume reissue of an esteemed two-volume collection includes essays and fiction, profiles and columns by such first-rank writers as Roger Angell, Stephen Jay Gould and John Updike. Abbott and Costello's Who's on First? also cracks the lineup of 114 entries.
59 Among the Thugs
BY BILL BUFORD (1991)
While he was editing the literary magazine Granta in London, Buford, an American, spent his weekends with soccer hooligans, whose violence both repulsed and mesmerized him. Newsweek called this "one of the most unnerving books you will ever read."
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