Baseball

by Robert Smith

Baseball: The game, the men who have played it, and it's place in American life.

Genres: Baseball

362 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1947

Reviews

[Anthony McGill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Think this was my first-ever baseball book. A 1970 revised and updated version by Robert Smith of his earlier work. I found this on a remainder shelf in a Melbourne bookstore sometime in the 1980s and greedily grabbed it - finding baseball books in Australia at the time was near impossible. One of the joys of hunting through some of these remainder shops was finding box loads of rare and academic treasures (at least to my eyes) from American university presses and overstocks by mainstream publishers being sold at ridiculously low prices.

So Robert Smith's 'Baseball' was one of those little treasures and I found it to be a wonderfully entertaining read and richly informative history of America's national game. The stories and characters are fascinating, Smith's knowledge of the game beyond reproach and his prose articulate and a joy to savor.

Although this history concludes with the 1969 season, this is still one of the best books ever written about baseball.

"Many a stately tome written by a Ph.D. and issued under the imprint of a great university press contains less of the essential history of this republic than Robert Smith's 'Baseball' - Mr Smith is a delightful chronicler who recalls briefly but definitely the light of the radiant past." (NY Herald Tribune)

Before the great Red Sox successes of the 2000s.
A selection from the chapter 'When Hearts Were Young' page 265 of 'Baseball'.

"We who had lent our hearts to the Red Sox in that day had few reasons to rejoice; yet the word, shouted beyond the doors of the shop we worked in, that the "Red Sox win!" used to fill us all with sudden deep delight that we would all stop what we were doing and look open-mouthed into each other's faces, then smile and exchange words of wonder and joy. The Red Sox! God damn them! Trod on by the league, ravished by their owners, spurned by the press, these scrubby, bowlegged, misbegotten bastards had got together at last to rub New York's nose in the mud. And in doing that they had given us all a taste of that daily triumph man needs to make life seem living."

(Review based on 1970 Simon and Schuster hardcover edition; 435 pages.)

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific literary stroll through the greatest players, managers, and teams of baseball history, and those teams and figures who are lost to time and memory. Robert Smith writes so wonderfully, and his prose is filled with sly humor and a clear-eyed appreciation of those who played the game.