From Library Journal
Dawidoff, the author of a well-regarded biography of Moe Berg (The Catcher Was a Spy), has assembled this collection of exemplary baseball writing. While acknowledging the literature's formative years with early boosters such as Albert Spalding and other "dead ball" era writers, he concentrates on its mature period, from Ring Lardner through the two Rogers (Kahn and Angell) of the modern era, even Don Delillo and Stephen King. Dawidoff smartly doesn't rule out a great piece of baseball writing merely because it's familiar: classics like Updike's account of Ted Williams's final 1960 game, Gay Talese's Esquire profile of the unknowable Joe DiMaggio, and W.C. Heinz's salute to the recklessly brave Pistol Pete Reiser belong in any anthology worth its pitching rosin. This wonderful introduction belongs alongside past collections such as The Armchair Guide to Baseball. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Like an all-star team, an anthology often falls short of achieving perfection. There's nearly always that lack of cohesion, or the nagging thought that someone crucial was left off the roster. But this collection is so rich, so stuffed with old friends and newly remembered gems, so chock-full of beautiful and shapely writing. Beginning with Thayer's Casey at the Bat and ending with Buster Olney, there are more than 700 pages of prose and poetry, fiction and sportswriting, writers and players. Scanning the table of contents, it almost seems like everybody wrote about baseball: Damon Runyon, Ring Lardner, James Weldon Johnson, William Carlos Williams, James Thurber. But so did Paul Gallico, Nelson Algren, Tallulah Bankhead, and Jacques Barzun. Satchel Paige's Rules for Staying Young is right there with Keith Hernandez's Pure Baseball; Roger Angell's prose and Marianne Moore's poetry gleam and glisten; Giamatti's Green Fields of the Mind, perhaps the loveliest short piece ever written on baseball, glows. The food writer Molly O'Neill writes a delicious essay about her little brother, Paul--he just retired from the Yankees--and the editor himself limns a piece in the introduction about his grandfather as perfectly as a strike-three call. Ineffable, indispensable, inimitable--just like baseball. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Robert Frost never felt more at home in America than when watching baseball "be it in park or sand lot." Full of heroism and heartbreak, the most beloved of American sports is also the most poetic, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents the story of the national adventure as revealed through the fascinating lens of the great American game.

Philip Roth considers the terrible thrill of the adolescent centerfielder; Richard Ford listens to minor-league baseball on the radio while driving cross-country; Amiri Baraka remembers the joy of watching the Newark Eagles play in the era before Jackie Robinson shattered the color line. Unforgettable portraits of legendary players who have become icons-Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Hank Aaron-are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn't hit in any of them."

Poems in Baseball: A Literary Anthology include indispensable works whose phrases have entered the language-Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Franklin P. Adams's "Baseball's Sad Lexicon"-as well as more recent offerings from May Swenson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Martin Espada. Testimonies from classic oral histories offer insights into the players who helped enshrine the sport in the American imagination. Spot reporting by Heywood Broun and Damon Runyon stands side by side with journalistic profiles that match baseball legends with some of our finest writers: John Updike on Ted Williams, Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Red Smith on Lefty Grove.

From the Publisher
Baseball: A Literary Anthology offers a lively mix of stories, memoirs, poems, news reports, and insider accounts about all aspects of the great American game, from its pastoral nineteenth-century beginnings to its apotheosis as the undisputed national pastime. Here are the major leaguers and the bush leaguers, the umpires and broadcasters, the wives and girlfriends and would-be girlfriends, fans meticulously observant and lovingly, fanatically obsessed. Here too are the teams of storied greatness—the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Red Sox—and the luminaries who made them legendary. Unforgettable portraits of icons such as Christy Matthewson, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, the catcher who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn’t hit in any of them." Drawing from the work of novelists from Ring Lardner to Don DeLillo, sportswriters from Damon Runyon to Red Smith, and poets from William Carlos Williams to Yusef Komunyakaa, and gathering essays and player profiles from John Updike, Gay Talese, Roger Angell, and David Remnick, Baseball: A Literary Anthology is a varied and exuberant display of what baseball has meant to American writers. Among the highlights: Philip Roth considers the terrible thrill of the adolescent centerfielder; Richard Ford listens to minor league baseball on the radio while driving cross-country; Amiri Baraka remembers the joy of watching the Newark Eagles play Negro League ball; Stephen King follows his son’s team on their riveting journey toward a Little League championship. Bringing together tales of ambition and heartbreak, childlike wonder and implacable disappointment, raw strength and even rawer emotion, Baseball: A Literary Anthology tells a rich and vital story about the sport that has always! been more than just a game in the hearts of Americans. Nicholas Dawidoff, editor, is the author of The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (1994), In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music (1997), and The Fly Swatter: How My Grandfather Made His Way in the World (2002).

FROM OUR EDITORS

Can we praise this anthology enough? Over the last century, baseball has evoked superb writing from many of our most gifted authors: John Updike; Don DeLillo; Bernard Malamud; Marianne Moore; Thomas Wolfe; William Carlos Williams. Library of America editor Nicholas Davidoff has tracked down the best of these, not neglecting baseball mavens such as Roger Angell, Roger Kahn, Ring Lardner, and James T. Farrell. Digging deep, he's discovered pieces we never knew about, such as Amiri Baraka's joyful reminiscences of watching the Negro Leagues' Newark Eagles and Red Smith's touching tribute to southpaw Lefty Grove.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Robert Frost never felt more at home than when watching baseball, "be it in park or sand lot." Full of heroism and heartbreak, the most beloved of American sports is also the most poetic, and writers have been drawn to this sports as no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents the story of the national adventure as revealed through the fascinating lens of the great American game.

Philip Roth considers the terrible thrill of the adolescent centerfielder; Richard Ford listens to minor-league baseball on the radio while driving cross-country; Amiri Baraka remembers the joy of watching the Newark Eagles play in the era before Jackie Robinson shattered the color line. Unforgettable portraits of legendary players who have become icons -- Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Hank Aaron -- are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn't hit in any of them."

Poems in Baseball: A Literary Anthology include indispensable works whose phrases have entered the language -- Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Franklin P. Adams's "Baseball's Sad Lexicon" -- as well as more recent offerings from May Swenson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Martin Espada. Testimonies from classic oral histories offer insights into the players who helped enshrine the sport in the American imagination. Spot reporting by Heywood Broun and Damon Runyan stands side by side with journalistic profiles that match baseball legends with some of our finest writers: John Updike on Ted Williams, Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Red Smith on Lefty Grove.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Dawidoff, the author of a well-regarded biography of Moe Berg (The Catcher Was a Spy), has assembled this collection of exemplary baseball writing. While acknowledging the literature's formative years with early boosters such as Albert Spalding and other "dead ball" era writers, he concentrates on its mature period, from Ring Lardner through the two Rogers (Kahn and Angell) of the modern era, even Don Delillo and Stephen King. Dawidoff smartly doesn't rule out a great piece of baseball writing merely because it's familiar: classics like Updike's account of Ted Williams's final 1960 game, Gay Talese's Esquire profile of the unknowable Joe DiMaggio, and W.C. Heinz's salute to the recklessly brave Pistol Pete Reiser belong in any anthology worth its pitching rosin. This wonderful introduction belongs alongside past collections such as The Armchair Guide to Baseball. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews