(Part 3) Top products from r/baseball

> Oh you are going to take the societal angle. I love that one. Women's MMA is just as popular as men's MMA because there is a demand for it. If there is a demand for it, people enjoy it. You can't force people to enjoy things they don't enjoy. That is social engineering, the exact thing you are talking about. You are talking about engineering a society to enjoy a certain thing just as you are complaining about that happening (without any proof).

That's actually not what I'm talking about at all, and I'm having a hard time understanding how you came to that conclusion.

I'm talking about people wanting to do a thing, and not being allowed to do that thing.

Girls, quite obviously, have historically wanted to play baseball. I didn't really think this statement required proof because of how obvious that is. Whether it's Lizzie Murphy in the 1920s or Mone Davis a few years ago, girls have historically been drawn to baseball, which isn't exactly surprising, because baseball is fucking awesome. But they weren't allowed to, and by the time Little League let them in in 1973, softball was already well-established as the path for girls.

I've coached baseball for about 25 years now, and while I recognize that this is anecdotal, I have never encountered a situation where a girl chose softball for a reason that couldn't be tied directly back to societal norms.

A lot of the kids I coach are in baseball families, where all of the boys play baseball and all of the girls play softball. Whenever I talk to the father in a "baseball family," and I ask why they signed the girls up for softball instead of baseball, I get the same response: baseball is for boys. I have only had one father ever give me a reason other than that, and it was because his daughter had a medical condition, and the doctors recommended softball because the ball was larger and softer, and because she could wear a helmet in the field without worrying about kids making fun of her. When I ask the little girls why they play softball instead of baseball, they either shrug their shoulders and say "IDUNNO" or they explain that it's because softball is for girls.

When I was coaching Little League All-Stars and we had a girl on the team, she would get heckled when we played out-of-state tournaments. Opposing coaches would shout "HIT IT AT THE GIRL" from the coaches box I had one coach come over before the game and warn our "little girl" that she better watch out when she steps up to the plate, because "sometimes my guys can get wild." Random parents would wonder aloud why her parents let her play baseball. These people were in the minority. Most of the parents treated her the same as he boys, and most of the coaches did, too. But guess who switched to softball the following year? See, you're right about not being able to make people enjoy stuff they don't enjoy. But you can most definitely make people not enjoy stuff that they enjoy.

When I was coaching in Babe Ruth, I took over a B-level team and would work with my affiliated A-level team, in much the same way that the Yankees work with Columbus. We were together at the draft, where one girl had tried out, and I suggested that she was definitely an A-level player and he should think about drafting her. His response: "If she was a boy, she'd go in the first round, but she's not, so be prepared to take her when you guys draft." Yeah, these assholes didn't even like picking kids with long hair, let alone girls. She dominated our division but was never even asked to fill in for one game at the A-level. Then she hit high school and did what every girl who ever plays in our league does: they quit their youth teams and try out for softball at the high school. In part because girls are barred by law from playing high school baseball in Massachusetts unless there's no softball team. But in part because boys don't want to date girls who play baseball. To quote a female ex-player, They just don't!

Anyway, I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that leads me to believe very strongly that the women's game would be much, much better if they hadn't been blackballed from baseball since, well, Spalding, but if you're interested in a more scholarly approach to the subject, I would recommend the book Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball. It covers the topic fairly comprehensively.

> The pure athleticism that it takes to throw a fastball and to hit a fastball cannot be taught.

It's interesting that you specifically mentioned hitting a fastball, because while I agree with you that there's a barrier to throwing 100 mph that women are unlikely to cross, hitting a 100 mph fastball would be one of their easier tasks, as female college players have already proven they can handle the reaction time needed to hit a ball coming at them that quickly.

Actually, 20 of the first 27 were won in 40 years from 1923-1962, when the Yankees had an absolute stranglehold on the finances of baseball. They were almost literally using two or three MLB teams as farm clubs, because they were so cash strapped they had no choice but to sell good players to the Yankees for straight up cash.

I always laugh when people say the finances of baseball are screwed up now. They won 20 of those championships due to indentured servitude. As soon as free agency started, they became a "regular" team (only two championships for the next 36 years after that 40-year run, from 1963-1996).

If anything, the last 7 are way more legitimate than the first 20 because they won those in some kind of framework of a rules system, and not the Wild West where they could just push people around by having 100 times more money than anybody else.

Here's a great book about how scummy and lopsided that era was. Kansas City and the Wrong Half of the Yankees

• The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract This book will give you a great overview of the game from 1870 to 1999. Breaks the game down by decades and what the game was like and how it changed. Also ranks the top 100 players at each position. Really anything by James is an entertaining read, but this is the must have for baseball conversation.
  
• Baseball Prospectus - Baseball Between the Numbers A good introductory course into the newer sabrmetrics. It will answer many questions in depth about what was going on as far as player evaluation in Moneyball.
  
• Tom Tango - The Book Much more advanced sabrmetrics but very current and groundbreaking. The author started on the internet, and last offseason secured a job working for the Seattle Mariners.
  
  The next three are to give you a better view of the game from the players/owners perspective.
  
  
• Veeck as in Wreck Bill Veeck was one hell of a guy. His father was president of the Cubs in the 30's, and Bill would go on to own his fair share of teams. Always an individual, he stood against the baseball ownership cabal on many occasions. Spent the last years of his life watching the Cubs from the center field bleachers. His autobiography is humorous and insightful. A must read for any baseball fan.
  
• Buck O'Neil - I was Right on Time Called the soul of negro league baseball, Buck O'Neil recounts his playing days in the negro leagues, and covers many of the legends in a very matter of fact way.
  
• Jim Bouton - Ball Four Last but not least is former Yankee star, now washed up knuckleballer Jim Bouton recalling the inaugural season of the short lived Seattle Pilots. Baseball players in all their vulgar glory. Also will teach you the fine art of "shooting beaver".

That's a broad topic. Let's see:

• Recent, still relevant baseball: The Arm by Jeff Passan. One of the best sportswriters today goes way in-depth to what's going on with pitching injuries. Fascinating read.
  
  
• Historical / Classic Reads: Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer, about the Brooklyn Dodgers in Jackie's day. Kahn's a wonderful storyteller.
  
  
• Weird, but wonderful: Philip Roth's The Great American Novel, about the fictional Patriot League. One of these days, I want to run an OOTP sim of the league and see what happens. Completely out there, but I loved it.
  
  
• Edit: Almost forgot! The Kid Who Only Hit Homers, by Matt Christopher. First baseball book I ever read.

Here's an album from a game I scored a couple years ago

First thing you'll want to do is familiarize yourself with everyones position. 1-pitcher, 2-catcher, 3-1st base, 4-2nd base, 5-3rd base, 6-short stop, 7-left field, 8-center field, 9-right field.

After a ball is put in play, you'll mark in order of who touched it. If it was a ground out to shortstop, it'll be a 6-3.

If someone got on base, draw a line on the basepath to where they got. (optionally, put a little tick to signify thats the base the ended on. E.g., if its a double put a tick on 2nd base. if they single, then advanced to 3rd on another hit, put ticks on 1st and 3rd base.) If a player was forced out, I draw a line halfway towards the base they were forced out on, then draw a perpendicular line to signify they never made it there.

I'll also signify how they advanced to that base. On this scorecard I signified the play that advanced them (E.g., 4-3) but now I put the player number who advanced them.

When there's a pitching change, I draw a squiggle line above the first batter he faces. On this old scoresheet, I only did that if the change happened in the middle of the inning. You can see an example on the Mariners scoresheet towards the end of the 4th inning (after they batted around and brought Jones out for a 2nd plate appearance that inning. )

If there's a change in whos hitting (pinch hitter, new pitcher) I'll draw a squiggle line to the left of that box. You can see this happened twice in the 7th inning for the Mariners with Gillespie replacing Chavez, and Romero replacing Ackley.

This is how I do it, you may come up with your own styles or freehand. Joy of Keeping Score is a pretty decent book that discuses the history and art of keeping score. As everyones is sure to be different, I'm sure more people can post and indicate how they keep score differently than me. The best thing to realize is that there isn't a 'correct' way to do it, just a lot of suggestions on how others have done it.

You should order this book from Amazon, and really study the form used for the various lifts. It's a really great introduction to strength training, and if you stick to it over the winter you'll be way ahead physically by the spring.

As for reaction, probably the best thing to do is to get the equipment on and have someone throw balls in dirt. The more you do it, the easier time you'll have anticipating the trajectory of each ball.

via the azcentral obit:
> He and his childhood friend, Lawrence Peter “Yogi'' Berra, both went on to play in the major leagues. Yogi was a Hall of Famer with the New York Yankees and Joe played with four teams, the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs and New York Giants.

> “Not only was I not the best catcher in the major leagues, I wasn't even the best catcher on my street,'' Garagiola said.

I really loved his book, Just Play Ball. Laugh-out-loud funny, with plenty of anecdotes I never read elsewhere.

Three of my favorites:

The Joy of Keeping Score - https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Keeping-Score-Influenced-Enhanced/dp/0802715702

The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics - https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Game-Baseballs-Fascination-Statistics/dp/0312322232

Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball - https://www.amazon.com/Shades-Glory-Leagues-African-American-Baseball/dp/079225306X

Jenkinson has done conclusive research, over the course of decades. Take a look at the book The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0786719060/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_0HTvCbRF7M71P

Objectively, the Babe hit dozens and dozens more homers due to that rule and cavernous outfields. He has a few more conclusions, but they're slightly subjective. For example, he thinks The Bambino's totals would not have significantly changed if baseball had been integrated, since he batted even better against Negro League teams. Remember, the Sultan of Swat was a barnstormer (even during the regular season), and he would play against anyone, anywhere. Jenkinson looked at 38 games he played against Negro major leagues teams' best pitchers, including, yes, Satchel Paige, and the King of Crash slugged over a thousand.

If you're into early baseball history, I highly recommend The Glory of Their Times .

​

For a specific year, Fifty-Nine in '84 is really entertaining and gives you a good perspective of 1880s baseball.

Well, among other things, JoeG is a hall-of-fame announcer who spent most of his "visible" career behind a microphone -- and regularly calls games for the Arizona Diamondbacks. That makes him particularly notable to those of us in Phoenix; perhaps I assumed y'all were aware of him equally well, just as I assumed you'd recognize the name Vin Scully. Sorry about that.

And he's written quite a bit about baseball, such as Just Play Ball.

FWIW, he's also been best friends with Yogi Berra since they were 6 years old. He, too, was a catcher to begin with.

Baseball's Big Train

The story of Walter Johnson, written by his grandson. It's a really great look at baseball in the early 1900's as well as the story of one of the greatest pitchers of all time.

How is he not being consistent? I root for the laundry. And we're Mets fans. The last time we won a World Series, the best book written about it was literally titled, "The Bad Guys Won".

If given the choice, then yeah, I'd rather have a successful team of nice guys than a successful team of assholes, but I'd rather have a successful team of assholes than a bunch of nice, friendly losers.

I was looking for a post like this. While I love basketball and football, I never really followed baseball. It just didn't seem to provide the same excitement. But after reading Phillip Roth's The Great American Novel I'm a convert. Looking forward to this season.

You are correct -- A Lefty's Legacy is a great biography, and it covered this issue extensively. Apparently Koufax's arm is curved slightly because of his pitching motion. He retired early because he was worried about his health.

EDIT - I just want to highly recommend A Lefty's Legacy by Jane Leavy. One interesting tidbit is that Koufax initially declined to help Leavy with a biography, so the project died. Several months (years?) later, Leavy was stranded at an airport. The only person she knew in that city was Koufax because of their prior brief conversation. She called and asked him for a ride from the airport, and he did it. Apparently they got along well, and he ended up helping with the biography.

His grandson wrote an excellent book about Walter and there’s a lot of people in the DC area who know who he was. The biggest sports bar near Nats Park is called Walter’s and is full of his pictures etc. There is also a high school named for him, several little league fields, etc. Walter’s grandson has thrown out the first pitch at Nats Park before.

(aside: there is an elderly man called Lorenzo Crowe who is a former Negro League player who is at Nationals Park for every game. The team gave him season tickets for life in the Diamond Club where the waiters always have a table reserved for him and a meal waiting for him, he gets invited to all the season ticket holder events, he is so loved by the team and the club staff. It’s really great to see.)

Now that we have a team again, more people are learning who he was. Having a generation grow up with no baseball in the city makes for a big gap in our history.

If I can recommend a good baseball read, it would be The Glory of their Times. It got me through blizzard season last year.

Reminds me of a play involving Willie Mays and the Giants, as described by Bill James in his Historical Abstract which, by the way should really be required reading for anyone who loves baseball, even if you aren't a major stat guy, just for stories like this.

> This actually happened, July 11, 1963, in Philadelphia, go check the newspapers if you don't believe me. Willie Mays draws a walk leading off the second inning. He has second base stolen standing up, but Orlando Cepeda fouls off the pitch. Second pitch, Mays has second base stolen again, Cepeda fouls off the pitch again, strike two. There's a pitchout and a ball outside; the count reaches two-two, and Mays takes off for second again. Once more, Cepeda fouls the ball off.

> Finally, fourth try, Mays goes for second and Cepeda squibs the ball off the end of his bat to the second baseman, Tony Taylor. Mays sees the ball rolling behind him and figures that he can make third on the throw to first, so he heads for third. Tony Taylor, however, has seen Willie Mays play baseball before, so he holds the ball a second before throwing to first. When Mays heads for third, Taylor throws across the infield, Mays is out at third by 40 feet.

> Mays, however, decides to stay in a rundown long enough to let Cepeda make second. Catching Willie Mays in a rundown is like trying to assassinate a squirrel with a lawn mower, so this goes on for some time, and Cepeda races down to second base, while Don Hoak (Philadelphia third baseman) chases Mays back to the same base. Mays and Cepeda, both near second base, stare at each other for a moment, while the ball pops loose on the ground before anybody can apply a tag to either one of them.

> So Mays heads back to third base.

> And Cepeda heads back to first.

> Taylor retrieves the ball and fires to third, and Willie Mays, for the second time on the same play, is caught in a rundown between second and third.

> Well, that out is eventually recorded; it's officially scored 4-5-6-1-6-4, but as the official scorer noted afterward, he couldn't be sure who all handled the ball, and a player can only get one assist on a play anyway, so he just gave an assist to everyone in the vicinity.

Read Canseco's first book, Juiced.

It might not be as explosive now as when it was new, but it's a good read about steroids in baseball and the majority of his claims have been vindicated since the book came out.

He is blunt and doesn't pull any punches.

If you are interested in the life of a minor leaguer, I HIGHLY recommend this book.

Don't know if you read this one but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

'The glory of their times.' Unbelievable oral history of some late 19th century and early 20th century players.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Glory-Their-Times-Baseball/dp/0688112730

Not really, no. There's a really excellent book about the systemic bias in youth baseball against girls, written by a parent whose daughter went through it and then thoroughly backs up her own experience with research. Available on Amazon here:

https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Bases-American-Girls-Baseball/dp/0252079159

Also, The Cheater's Guide to Baseball is great read.

As someone who enjoyed the book when I read it earlier this year, it'd be cool to see a film adaptation of "If They Don't Win It's a Shame: The Year the Marlins Bought the World Series". It's all about the 1997 Marlins and all the personalities and oddities that surrounded/defined that club. If you want to hear Jim Leyland curse a lot, you're golden. This is probably a better idea than "The First Act of A Christmas Carol: Jeffrey Loria Edition" that you'd have to make otherwise.

It's a book, it's for the Pirates what The Extra 2% is for the Rays or Moneyball for the A's.

Here's one of the relevant quotes:

> Teams typically employ their fastest, rangiest outfielder in center field, which most commonly has the greatest amount of ground to cover. But left field at PNC Park was actually larger than center. Hurdle knew that he essentially needed another center fielder to play left field. You could mask an infielder's limitations by aligning him more smartly via shifts, but even with data-based outfield alignment you couldn't hide lack of speed in the outfield or a player who ran poor routes to intercept fly balls and line drives. The Pirates needed an elite athlete to cover left field, and Hurdle needed someone to find him that player. That someone was Rene Gayo, who more than anyone else helped the Pirates meet their geographical challenges and take advantage of some of the game's other undervalued skills: speed and athleticism.

It then goes into detail on Gayo, scouting in the Dominican, and eventually, finding Marte and making him that guy.

Well, he did write this book which is kind of a baseball-themed King novel.

My favorite is probably "The Bad Guys Won" about the 1986 team

You might like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXoRdSTrR-4

And this https://smile.amazon.com/Cheaters-Guide-Baseball-Derek-Zumsteg/dp/0618551131?sa-no-redirect=1

Worth a look if you haven't read it already: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Data-Baseball-Miracles-20-Year/dp/1250063507

Is Stephen King working on a sequel?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Girl-Who-Loved-Gordon/dp/0671042858

Buy this book. Learn the lifts in the first chapters and do the program at the back. Eat all the things.

How do you figure?


https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/ol/0060746416/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all

I don't remember if I checked out If They Don't Win It's a Shame: The Year the Marlins Bought the World Series from the library in my youth.

It's been a while since I read this book but it confirms a lot of distances on his home runs, forget if this one is in it.

https://www.amazon.com/Year-Babe-Ruth-Home-Runs/dp/0786719060

Even if you're not a Mets fan, I think The Worst Team Money Could Buy is still and essential read

Your list is great, so I'm just going to tack on some suggestions to what you've already got rather than start my own.

Numbers-y, science-y books
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First by Jonah Keri

Memoirs
Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit by Matt McCarthy

Veeck as in Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck

Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big

and Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball by Jose Canseco

Fiction
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Non-fiction

Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball by George F. Will

The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-Stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds

and The Good Stuff: Columns about the Magic of Sports

and The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski

3 Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager by Buzz Bissinger

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

The Pitch That Killed: The Story of Carl Mays, Ray Chapman, and the Pennant Race of 1920 by Mike Sowell

Yes, I understand the irony of Joe Posnanski and Jose Canseco being the only author with multiple books. Just read Canseco's books. They're actually not bad.

There are more I'm forgetting. I must have read 50 books about baseball in my short life. I'll add them if I remember.