5 Old Baseball Books to Warm Your October Nights
And make you want to cut school!
Ah, October!
When boys across the land cut out of school early to watch the World Series.
Or at least hunker down in their chairs during Social Studies to get a closer listen to the broadcast on their transistor radios.
Yeah, I’m a dinosaur who can’t always make it through every late-night postseason broadcast these days. And my team (the Reds *sigh*) are generally done by August.
But when I need some old-time diamond nostalgia on a chilly autumn night (or anytime, really), I can always reach for a classic — or maybe just long-forgotten — baseball book to tide me over.
There are way too many baseball books that have brought me joy over the years to list them all here, so I’ll just run through five “old” tomes that I still love. I’m including (affiliate) links to eBay listings, too, just in case you want to try and track down an ancient, crumbling copy of your own.
Greatest World Series Thrillers
This is one of those kid-focused books that you might have found in your grade school library during the 1970s, right alongside the biography of Gil Hodges or the recounting of the first Super Bowl.
As it turns out, though, I found my copy a few years ago at a local thrift store run by our Human Society — a double-dose of goodness, combining baseball with a little bit of cash funnelled to our furry friends.
Anyway, this one runs through some of the most exciting World Series baseball moments from 1905 through 1963 and is a delight to read … over and over.
The Bill James Historical Abstract
Bill James is largely responsible for the modern Sabermetrics movement, or at least for pushing it into basebaball’s mainstream. But he’s not all bits and bytes, imparting plenty of human interest and historical context to the numbers he loves through his writing.
I came across the Historical Baseball Abstract while I was in college, and it was a real eye-opener about how baseball gives us the tools (statistics) to make comparisons across eras. It also taught me a lot about players I had never heard of before.
It’s hours of reading in the palm of your hands, but it’s also one of those books you can go back to forever and always find something new.
Noonan: A Novel About Baseball, ESP and Time Warps
This is a sort of odd entry, and one probably not too many have even heard of.
I landed my copy of Noonan at a garage sale back in the 1980s just as I was really starting to tumble helplessly down the baseball rabitthole.
As the subtitle mentions, it’s a wild mixup of baseball, time travel, ESP, and other strange bedfellows … and I loved it.
Given the supernatural bits here, Noonan is also a fitting choice for October, and for Halloween.
The Boys of Summer
If you want a stonecold baseball classic that can mak you miss an era you were never even part of, The Boys of Summer has you covered.
What happens to our heroes when they get old? When we get old?
Roger Kahn makes us face those thoughts and invites us to contemplate our summers … what better time for that than autumn?
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
This one’s not all that old, and it’s not really a baseball book.
But King does a great job of weaving the diamond into everyday life (well, “everyday” in a King-novel world, anyway).
Baseball is a backdrop to all that’s happening in this story, just like it is to all that’s happening in our lives.
Crappy day at work? Might as well check the evening paper to see how the batting races are shaping up.
Waiting for your kid to finish violin lessons? Maybe you can catch Aaron Judge’s next at-bat on your phone.
Lost in the woods, with a beast hunting you down? Hey, remember that time Flash Gordon led the league in saves?
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Hope you found some reading inspiration in this list, and I’d love to hear your picks, too.
Until next time, enjoy the playoffs (if you can stay awake), and remember that the next baseball adventure is just a page turn away.
Thanks for reading.
—Adam