HiPlains Bookshelf - Opening Day Edition

Today is officially opening day--sorry, any day that includes the Cardinals as my only viewing option hardly feels like baseball season--and, like the girls in sundresses and guys in sandals I've seen recently just because we've topped 55-degrees, everyone can pretend it's summer even thought it's still damn cold and mostly miserable outside. Such is the power of baseball.

But if you're not at the park today and seeking more than Baseball Tonight can offer alone, you're in luck. In anticipation of Opening Day, publishers have been trotting out baseball books for the past couple of months and there are a couple of new ones worth your time.

As a whole, baseball writing often represents the best in the genre. Something about the old-fashioned Americana nostalgia of it brings the best writers to the sport and the best out of writers who cover all sports. Below are my thoughts on two new titles and two relatively new classics, but there are number of interesting titles I have yet to read and you can find links to their Amazon pages in the sidebar.

Fantasyland - Sam Walker

In the first-person, fan-obsessed tradition of Blythe and Simmons, Sam Walker, a scribe for the Wall Street Journal, tackles fantasy baseball as a first time owner in the "most competitive" league in the country, Tout Wars.

While the rest of Walker's league is made up of professional fantasy baseball writers (still, the oddest profession to me), the author goes for a mix of science and personal survey, actually going on the road and utilizing his WSJ access to meet Jacque Jones, Bill Mueller and a handful of others.

The actual story of Walker's season, while fun, isn't nearly as interesting as the cast of characters who populate Tout Wars. These are the people who inform the people who beat you senseless every year.

Crazy '08 - Cait Murphy

This book's sub titular claim, "How a Case of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History," is pure hyperbole, but Murphy's tale of the 1908 season is a fascinating historical record.

While baseball was certainly a force in the early-20th century, people actually did gather around electronic scoreboards to "watch" the game just like that Miller High Life commercial by the hundreds, this book exposes how the sport still ran by the seat of it's pants. One umpire with three game balls per game, whiskey at the park, World Series ties due to darkness, crowds ringing the outfield. It definitely was professional baseball, but it ran like your average coal-town team.

There's an added bonus for Cubs fans as Chicago was a veritable dynasty during the time, winning more games in a five-year span than any team ever and that record still stands. "Whoever heard of the Cubs losing a game they had to have?" Frank Chance asks in the book.

Well, Frank, only 90-years worth of heavy-heart fans. Painful irony defined.

The Numbers Game - Alan Schwarz

If you've read Moneyball, this is the logical next step. An exhaustive look at the passionate link between baseball and statistics, Schwarz leaves no bag untouched. Strat-O-Matic Baseball, Retrosheet, SABR and Bill James, the evolution of the box score, the book literally touches on everything.

Perhaps the best baseball book I've read in the past five years. Well worth your time and $13.95.

Three Nights in August - H.G. Bissinger

I was a bit skeptical about Bissinger's second act in the sports book realm after the stunning success of Friday Night Lights, but this microscopic look at one series between the Cubs and Cardinals provides a pretty good look into the mind of Tony LaRussa and the clubhouse chess games that make up the American pasttime.

As enjoyable as it might be for Cubs fans to revel in the glory in Crazy '08, it's equally painful to hear LaRussa scheme for Wood and Prior back when they were world beaters ready to kick down the door to the Hall of Fame.

Didn't quite work out that way, and now LaRussa's the manager of the defending world champions. An excruciating, but necessary reminder of the way things were.

Play ball. Drink beer. Eat hot dogs. Baseball is here.