Baseball and Culture: The Nine Best Baseball Books
I can’t pretend to have read everything ever written about baseball, but I wish that I could. I love baseball and I love reading. As you might expect given that information, I also love books about baseball. Here are some of my favorites and no fan’s library is complete without them. Feel free to recommend more in the comments section.
[Editor’s Note: You can find a crowd-sourced list of favorite baseball books here]
9. Men at Work by George Will (Amazon)
Will’s book tells the story of the game through discussions of specific players and managers. It’s the ultimate case study of the thinking baseball man. It’s about two decades old at this point, but it’s just as easy to pick up now and feel smell the fresh cut grass in every page.
8. Fantasyland by Sam Walker (Amazon)
This may be the only book about fantasy baseball on this list, but that doesn’t make the story any less real. Walker, a WSJ writer, spent a year chronicling his participation in one of the oldest and most competitive fantasy baseball leagues. It’s a great read and it’s about seven years old at this point, so it’s a quaint version of fantasy sports that doesn’t include Twitter.
7. Now I Can Die in Peace by Bill Simmons (Amazon)
Simmons is famous for his work as the Sports Guy and as editor of Grantland, but way back when, he was actually a fan of baseball and his hometown Red Sox. This book is a compilation of columns he wrote about the Sox leading up to their improbable 2004 World Series run. The title says it all, but it’s still a fun read even though the Red Sox have now become as annoying to all baseball fans as the Yankees.
6. 3 Nights in August by Buzz Bissinger (Amazon)
Bissinger, of Friday Night Lights fame, spend three nights in August trailing around Cardinals’ manager Tony LaRussa in 2003. I honestly haven’t picked this one up in a long time, but I remember finding it to be a great love letter to baseball.
5. Perfect by James Buckley (Amazon)
This book is great for a couple reasons. First, it’s the story of every perfect game in baseball history, which should be enough for you to buy it immediately. But it’s also the story of every perfect game that almost was. There’s an entire chapter devoted to pitchers who made it 8 2/3 innings before giving up a hit or a walk to the final batter. The other great thing about this book is that I read it a couple years (2008?) after Randy Johnson’s perfect game in 2004. Within the following four years, there would be like six more perfect games. I read this entire book and now it’s 33% longer!
Editor’s Note: Wait to buy this one until the three(!) 2012 perfect games are included.
4. Moneyball by Michael Lewis (Amazon)
This is probably the most famous book on the list. It’s become a target in the last few years, especially after the Hollywood adaptation. But the book itself is brilliant and wildly misunderstood by people who obviously didn’t read it. Moneyball is about the cash strapped A’s and their quest to exploit market inefficiency in order to win an unfair game. A lot of people turned this into a stats v. scouts book, and it absolutely wasn’t. This was a book about a team that folded statistical analysis into their player evaluation model because scouts were missing something. Scouts don’t miss these things as much anymore. The A’s spend more on their scouts than they did when the book was written because they do value that perspective. They just needed to find out what everyone else was undervaluing so that they could win without big dollar sign
3. 56 by Kostya Kennedy (Amazon)
56 is a really simple concept. It’s the story of the greatest athletic achievement in sports history. It’s the story of Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hit streak in 1941. The book is a lot of fun and folds in a lot of great baseball history and its connection to the history of the nation. Kennedy also does a great job interspersing short analysis and commentary between chapters of the narrative to help you think about the streak from a modern point of view.
2. Heart of the Game by S.L. Price (Amazon)
This is the heartbreaking story of Mike Coolbaugh and the line drive that ended his life. He was coaching first base at a minor league game when a foul ball caught him in the neck and the book tells his story and the story of the man who hit the baseball. It’s a story about trying to make it in a tough game and also about coping with tragedy and loss. It’s a heavy read, but it’s as brilliant as it is sad.
1. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (Amazon)
Fielding is the only work of fiction on this list, but it has a well-earned spot at the top of this list. Harbach’s first novel is a bit soapy at times, but that doesn’t detract from its wonderful treatment of a college baseball team at a small liberal arts school in Wisconsin. The story itself is great, but the way Harbach handles baseball tells you he’s not only a fantastic writer, but a true fan. The occasional uncomfortable sex scene is not nearly enough to make you want to put down one of the most compelling arrangements of sentences and paragraphs I’ve ever read.
Stuck Between the Yankees and the A’s: Mid-Market Business Models
The Marlins embarrassing fire sale has a lot of people talking about the business model of that franchise and how it has long been a bare bones payroll operation that feasts on revenue sharing. Essentially, the Marlins ownership is operating the cheapest team possible so that they can profit from MLB redistributing wealth designed to help small market teams increase payroll and be more competitive.
Revenue sharing is meant to take from the rich and give to the poor. It’s supposed to take money from the Yankees and give it to the A’s so that the A’s can add a little more payroll and be a little more competitive. It’s good for the parity of the sport.
But the Marlins are gaming the system and running a skeleton crew because the only condition of revenue sharing is being an MLB team. Other small market clubs don’t do this. They are trying to win with limited resources and find creative ways to do so. Tampa Bay and Oakland are classic examples of clubs that sell high on players who are due big raises and buy low on guys who are undervalued.
They play Moneyball. Miami plays “Losing Ball.” Just put 25 guys on a roster and feast on the profits. It’s obnoxious and the next CBA should put rules in place to spot it, but it got me thinking about market size and success.
A lot of smaller market/revenue clubs have exploited the Moneyball model and won a lot of games in the last decade. We also see a lot of big market teams win. What about the middle range clubs?
I think middle market clubs might actually be at a disadvantage and I’d like to outline why.
Big market teams can afford risky extensions and free agent contracts to good players. If the Yankees overpaid Alex Rodriguez (they did), they are not threatening the long term health of the franchise. If that contract stinks in 2014, they can spend their way out of the hole. They may choose not to, but they have that option given the resources at their disposal.
Small market clubs have the opposite arrangement. They can only afford favorable contracts. They lock up young players very early and guarantee a smaller sum, but do so much earlier than they have to. On the FA market, they sign players coming off down years and injuries who rich teams don’t bid on.
Both approaches have worked in recent memory. The Yankees and A’s are great examples. They both won 94+ games this year with dramatically different business models. Both can be successful if the right leadership is in charge.
But I believe that mid-market clubs are in a tough situation relative to the big and small markets. Mid-market teams have the resources to spend on the market, but they can only do so in a limited way. The Brewers, for example, could afford to sign Josh Hamilton this year (or Fielder last year), but if they plunked down that cash, they would be boxed in for years to come. If the contract didn’t work out as planned, they would not be able to spend their way out of it in 4 years and would be stuck with Hamilton and a bunch of AAAA players.
They have the money to spend sometimes, but not all the time. Their fans demand action, but if the action fails because all big deals are risky, they cannot fix it with another big deal. If they don’t provide action and sign Casey Kotchmans, their fan base will be unhappy because they look at the payroll and see the flexibility.
They have the money to spend, but if they spend it now, they can’t spend it later. In other words, when they go for it, they have to guess right. Signing that big player has to work out or it torpedoes the club for years.
These clubs want to avoid risk, but fans demand risk because they know the team can afford it. Fans are impatient and want to win now, but organizations want to win consistently. If they take a bad risk, it will ruin them.
The Yankees can take bad risks and spend out of them. The A’s never take bad risks because they can’t afford it. The Brewers can take risks, but they can only do so every so often. With an impatient population like sports fans, that’s a tough spot to be in if you’re a GM.
When do you spend? If you think Hamilton is a bad risk, you should pass. But if you pass too much, your fans start to drift away. They start to resent you. If they stop coming, the payroll is more constrained and you can’t win them back as easily.
Basically, mid-market clubs are stuck between spending and fans who understand why they can’t spend.
Tampa Bay and Oakland can trade their star players on the cusp of free agency and their fans understand that they’re getting a good return at the right time before they can’t afford these stars. A lot of mid-market teams can’t do that. Imagine the Reds trading Votto this year before the extension. Fans would have revolted.
We often speak about the struggles of the small market clubs, but small market clubs have gotten it right in the past. It’s not impossible to succeed in that framework. I think it’s harder to win from the middle because you have to balance resources with expectations.
That said, it’s hard to feel bad for MLB GMs who have one of the most fun jobs in the world.
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