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Baseball Eccentrics: A Definitive Look at the Most Entertaining, Outrageous and Unforgettable Characters in the Game
A round up of the most outrageous group of malcontents, characters, rebels, nut jobs, reprobates, wing-nuts, wackos, space cadets, head cases, goofs, free thinkers, and oddballs who ever livened up the grand old game of baseball, this collection not only describes their most bizarre antics in often-hilarious detail, but also includes the unique thoughts of Bill “Spaceman” Lee, a man known for his colorful quotes and offbeat personality.
- GenresBaseballSportsNonfiction
240 pages, Hardcover
First published March 30, 2007
4 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
Bill Lee
107 books6 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 17, 2024
Baseball taught me how to read and do math. I could figure out my batting average while rounding first at the age of eight. It taught me all the things that matter: the long season, the need to take your cuts, the hope of waiting till next year. Every cliché in baseball is a religious truth.
That quote above is absolutely fabulous— a five-star baseball quote. It appears in the book’s introduction, and when I read it, I assumed that this would be a great baseball book. I was wrong.
I had read two of Bill Lee’s previous books (The Wrong Stuff, and Have Glove, Will Travel) and found both to be great fun. I enjoyed Lee’s humor. But for some reason, this one just didn’t work. Perhaps it is because in those other books Lee is telling his own story, using sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes outrageous humor to mythologize his own life. But here, while repeating short tales about a plethora of baseball characters from all eras of the game, his humor misfires. While in his earlier books it provoked guffaws, here it’s usually only good for groans.
Which leads into the book’s other problem — there are too many boring or only marginally interesting stories here. In his introduction, Lee explains what makes a baseball flake or eccentric:
In baseball parlance “flake” is a rather nebulous category that includes the following: malcontents, characters, cranks, rebels, fruitcakes, nut jobs, wingnuts, whackos, space cadets, head cases, nonconformists, goofs, nutcases, freethinkers, book readers, and other subcategories of eccentrics, like geography majors and left handed Californians.
It’s just too easy to be a baseball flake — the category is too broad. And Lee throws them all in. Educated and read a book or two? He’s in here. So dumb he routinely does and says stupid things? He’s in here. Often loud and profane? Yep, in here. And many of these marginal flakes are guys you’ve never heard of, from old-timey baseball days, or even guys who never made the majors. By the time I hit the book’s halfway point I was skimming.
There are some good baseball stories in Baseball Eccentrics, just not enough to salvage the book. The best of them you likely already know, anyway, and are told better elsewhere.
That quote above is absolutely fabulous— a five-star baseball quote. It appears in the book’s introduction, and when I read it, I assumed that this would be a great baseball book. I was wrong.
I had read two of Bill Lee’s previous books (The Wrong Stuff, and Have Glove, Will Travel) and found both to be great fun. I enjoyed Lee’s humor. But for some reason, this one just didn’t work. Perhaps it is because in those other books Lee is telling his own story, using sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes outrageous humor to mythologize his own life. But here, while repeating short tales about a plethora of baseball characters from all eras of the game, his humor misfires. While in his earlier books it provoked guffaws, here it’s usually only good for groans.
Which leads into the book’s other problem — there are too many boring or only marginally interesting stories here. In his introduction, Lee explains what makes a baseball flake or eccentric:
In baseball parlance “flake” is a rather nebulous category that includes the following: malcontents, characters, cranks, rebels, fruitcakes, nut jobs, wingnuts, whackos, space cadets, head cases, nonconformists, goofs, nutcases, freethinkers, book readers, and other subcategories of eccentrics, like geography majors and left handed Californians.
It’s just too easy to be a baseball flake — the category is too broad. And Lee throws them all in. Educated and read a book or two? He’s in here. So dumb he routinely does and says stupid things? He’s in here. Often loud and profane? Yep, in here. And many of these marginal flakes are guys you’ve never heard of, from old-timey baseball days, or even guys who never made the majors. By the time I hit the book’s halfway point I was skimming.
There are some good baseball stories in Baseball Eccentrics, just not enough to salvage the book. The best of them you likely already know, anyway, and are told better elsewhere.
February 6, 2018
Kind of a mixed bag. It has some great stories about the game's colorful characters, and I enjoyed many of the anecdotes. Spaceman Lee himself comes across as someone that I'd really hate to be trapped at a bar with -- an unappealing mixture of pompous, opinionated, and loud -- and the parts where his voice comes through most strongly aren't actually much fun at all. The book was good reading for when I was on the plane, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Nash and Zullo's "Baseball Hall of Shame" books, and I doubt I'll refer back to it all that frequently.
August 6, 2023
You can’t go wrong with Bill Lee because he’ll always make you laugh and if you love baseball you’ll laugh even harder!!!
March 8, 2018
A fun collection of baseball anecdotes. I have heard many of them, but I guess that just means that I am exhausting this genre.
September 15, 2009
Frequently laugh-out-loud hysterical, but ultimately too disjointed for my tastes. Bill 'Spaceman' Lee is beloved for his quirks, and he clearly shows equal affection for ballplayers who've made unusual contributions to the game. But it's clear that not a lot of editing was done to Bill Lee's stream-of-consciousness writing, and the anecdotes sometimes go off on bizarre tangents. Still, there are laughs on most every page. It's a good book to read in small bits and pieces rather than in one sitting.
November 2, 2007
I picked this up at the library. I didn't finish, but the first few chapters were good.
April 24, 2009
A good light read. Perfect for reading while stuffed on the train. Lots of fun anecdotes and not much else.
January 19, 2012
Bill Lee was a great pitcher, has a fine sense of humor and his book is great fun.
November 15, 2015
Pretty funny stories. Enjoyable perspectives from some off the wall ballplayers.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews