Baseball's Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of the National Pastime's Outrageous Offenders, Lucky Bounces, and Other Oddities

by Floyd Conner

Edd Roush was once ejected from a game for falling asleep in the outfield. Dan Friend played left field while dressed in a bathrobe. Outfielder Len Koenecke was killed attempting history’s first skyjacking. Pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich swapped not only their wives but also their children, station wagons, and pets.Baseball history is brimming with the weird, the bizarre, and the hard to believe. Baseball's Most Wanted™ chronicles 700 of the most outlandish players, managers, and owners throughout baseball history. Its seventy lists describe in humorous detail baseball’s top-ten inept players, strange plays, bad practical jokes, bizarre nicknames, murderers, politicians, Don Juans, unusual contracts, notable nicknames, curses, worst trades, freak injuries, unsolved mysteries, least-known records, and more. Many of these anecdotes have been published here for the first time.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[david-baptiste · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a baseball book junkie--the use of language, invention of words, phrases, concepts, the collection of bizarre, sinister and insane charcters, the incredible array of statistical conjunctions that boggle the mind, the mass acceptance of outright superstition, voodoo, hexes, exorcisms--al of it makes basebll the most entertaining sport on and off the field, and the one that's generated the greatest number of works devoted to sheer "abnormality," "improbablity," and "linguistic mayhem." This book is a small classic of sevral of these "genres" of baseball lore compiled in a series of sections offering the author's idea of the ten worst offenders in each "category." The hilarious part is that for each one within a group of ten, ten more come to mind, so the book is accompanied by al the charcters one recalls oneself, gambl;ing around in the Elysian Fields with the ones detailed in sharp portriats. My lone criticism is that there not enough quotes from two of baseball's greatest linguistic acrobats, Joachim Andujar and Mickey Riovers. Heck, you could fill a book simply by compliling the quotes of those two and some others quoted, not enough, either! in the book's section for masters of malapropisms and other misadventures with words--the likes of Rlph Kiner--PPPhil Rizzuto, Caseyt Stengel, Yogi Berra, etc--the horde of alternate English experimental poets. In a ulture in which language has become often incredibly dull and hypocritical, it's refreshing to read the complete
, airy indifference of ball players to the conventional, intheir mangled aspirations to the heights of some imgainary ideal of what "impressive " or "rational" speech should be. The rampant superstitions are also great to find in an era in which Creationism and Darwininism are considered "culture wars" still and the wolrd is awash with religious madness. And this stuff goes on everyday in baseball--in Spring Training last year a reporter was interviewing a rookie hopeful for the Milwaukee newspaper, and concluded with the tradtional question--what ere the young man's particualr "favorite suspetrstitions." The rookie replied--" I don't belive in any of that stuff. It's bad luck."
Or theother night, listening to a game, the batter at the plate, with a 2 and 2 count, peers in and the announcer says--"Bill, he's looking for that high one inside." "yeah, "the sidekick inthe booth says, "he's been lookin it for since he was four years old. And you know what Bob? It ain't nver gonna come." Bob replies--"Well, there's always Hope, isn't there?" "yeah but Hope ain't luck."
As Joachim Andujar told a reporter, withhis usual total confidence in his inflliable insights: "baseball can be summed up in two words. You never can tell." Or the erratic outfielder explaining why he couldn't keep his eyes on the ball arcing towards him running towards the warning path--"How can i watch the ball when my eye balls bounce when I'm running?"

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had many parts to it . My favorite section of the book was memorable memorabilia. some people have gone to new heights to get the best baseball memorabilia. one group of men thought they were very lucky when they bought a game worn jersey worn by Lou Gehrig for $3000 in the early 1900s. Another was a signature written by Shoe-less Joe Jackson which went for $23000. I would recommend this book to people who want to know more about baseball than is said in the news or on a sports channel.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another in the seemingly endless line of funny story/trivia/fact/record/first/greatest type baseball books people have given me as joke gifts and stocking stuffers. Fine.

[Adam Gaston · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great bathroom reader

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book filled with many funny, sad, and just plain weird stories including some old favorites and many new to me, my only complaint is that a couple tales are missing some of the meat

Great stuff