This year’s crop of baseball books covers a wide swath — memoir, biography, history and more. We hear from Pete Rose and Yogi Berra’s son, from a philosopher and a former MLB commissioner. There’s enough here to get you through extra innings.
• “Play Hungry: The Making of a Baseball Player,” by Pete Rose (Penguin Press)
In 23 seasons Pete Rose, aka “Charlie Hustle,” established a bunch of records — most hits (4,256), most games played (3,562), most at-bats (14,053) — you get the idea. This is not Rose’s first book since he was permanently banned from baseball and made ineligible for induction at Cooperstown. Here he focuses on stories from baseball’s Golden Age and on his dedication to playing the game “the right way.”
• “K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches,” by Tyler Kepner (Doubleday)
Kepner, the national baseball writer for the New York Times, has chosen a nifty conceit. He’s organized his history of the game around the 10 major types of pitches — slider, fastball, knuckleball, splitter, screwball, sinker, change-up, cutter, spitball, curveball. He relies on the testimony of hurlers with the most recorded strikeouts to elucidate the complicated and magical art of throwing a ball 60 feet 6 inches. The result is a fascinating tour of the sport as seen from the mound.
• “Infinite Baseball: Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark,” by Alva Noe (Oxford)
This is an original, amusing tome that validates the “small ball” theory of writing — the smaller the ball, the better the writing. Noe, a baseball-loving philosopher, disagrees with the current preoccupation with numbers and Major League Baseball’s obsession with speeding up — thus shortening — the game. (There’s a full chapter called “In praise of being bored.”) In addition to metaphysical reflections, Noe takes up the more administrative aspects of the sport: the role of umpires, the strike zone and the value of instant replay.