Recommended Books
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The Natural, Bernard Malamud’s first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin’s comment still holds true: “Malamud has done something which—now that he has done it!—looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology.”
It is 1947, the year Jackie Robinson breaks major-league baseball's color barrier by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers-and changes the world. This is the story of that season, as told through the eyes of a difficult, brooding, and wounded man named Joseph Burke. Burke, a veteran of World War II and a survivor of Guadalcanal, is hired by Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey to guard Robinson. While Burke shadows Robinson, a man of tremendous strength and character suddenly thrust into the media spotlight, the bodyguard must also face some hard truths of his own, in a world where the wrong associations can prove fatal.
A brilliant novel about a very real man, Double Play is a triumph: ingeniously crafted, rich with period detail, and re-sounding with the themes familiar to Parker's readers-honor, duty, responsibility, and redemption.
As the star closer for his high school baseball team, Shane Hunter is untouchable. Firing fastballs at ninety miles per hour, he loves being a winner. But when his father is accused of a crime, Shane's charmed world is turned upside down. Nothing is the way it once was, and Shane's not sure he wants to -- or even can -- pitch ever again. But like baseball, life sometimes throws you curves, and Shane discovers it's how you play the game that counts most of all.
Tom Gallagher is in a tight spot. The fate of the Dillontown team rests on the outcome of one baseball game, winner take all. If Tom's team loses, they lose their field too. But how can they possibly win? Just when everything seems hopeless, a mysterious boy named Cruz de la Cruz rides into town and claims to know the secret of hitting. Not to mention the secrets of Dante Del Gato, Dillontown's greatest hitter ever. Since he walked away from the game years ago, Del Gato hasn't spoken a word to anyone. But now he might be Tom's only hope for saving his hometown. From the award-winning author of Over the Wall and Choosing Up Sides comes this imaginative tale of one boy's struggle to preserve the spirit of the game he loves.
Danny Gurkin believes in his heart that the Sluggers are the best team in baseball. There's just the small matter of breaking a century-old curse involving a pretzel, a bubble-gum tycoon, and a missing shortstop. Danny also believes that the outcome of Sluggers' games depends on him and hot dogs. Because eating two hot dogs with everything before each game is the best kind of luck a fan can give his team. Danny Ghurkin has a date with baseball destiny; he just doesn't know it. Yet.
Inspired by the hit movie A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, this is a delightful tribute to the All- American Girls Professional Baseball League, created during World War II. The story focuses in particular on Katie Casey, who preferred "sliding to sewing" and "batting to baking" and is mentioned as a "baseball-mad" girl in the song TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME! Determined Katie makes it all the way to the big leagues and finds a sisterhood of friends and players. This is a girl-power story like no other.
Andy Oyler is the shortest player on his baseball team, the Minneapolis Millers, not to mention the whole league. And no matter how hard he tries, he just can't seem to get a hit. But one fateful spring day in 1903, a sudden change in the weather leads to a change in Andy Oyler’s luck—and as Andy soon discovers, even the shortest player can become the game's biggest hero! Matt Tavares brings one of baseball's legendary stories to life and champions the underdog in all of us. Helping readers keep score is a bibliography and final note from the author about this uplifting all-American tale.