Baseball Books

William Hartel's affectionate tribute to the "Friendly Confines" of Wrigley Field is a must for any baseball fan, and especially if you've ever been fortunate to watch a game there. Though there are numerous historical photos outlining the history of the old park built in 1914, the bulk of the pictures were taken from dawn to dusk on the same day - June 18, 1993. Loaded with quotes and stories from everyone from Bill Veeck to Ernie Banks and long-time National League Umpire Doug Harvey, this book makes its case that Wrigley is not only the best place on earth to play and watch baseball, but one of the most memorable places to visit for fans of all ages. I read this book on a cold January evening yet when I closed my eyes, I could feel the sun on my face, smell the hot dogs, and hear Ernie Banks saying, "Let's play two!"

.

Holy Cow!

Maybe THIS year!

As I write this review, da Cabs have just won their first post-season series since 1908. There is euphoria in Wrigleyville! What a gorgeous anthology book to celebrate - in essays of words and pictures - da Cubs and dere Friendly Confines! Dere's a foreword by George F. Will and mouth-watering pictures of peanuts, popcorn, and hotdogs. (Hey! Where's some Cracker Jacks? ;-) The frontispiece and back (is that called a backispeice?) are appropriately covered in ivy.

Here's the Dust Jacket Lead Off by Ernie Banks: Ballplayers come and go, but Wrigley Field endures. As long as Cub fans take their kids out to the Friendly Confines and show them where baseball should be played, the chain will be unbroken.

Believe!

Reviewed by TundraVision, Once a Cub fan, always a Cub Fan

A GREAT GIFT FOR ANY BASEBALL FAN. A GREAT TOUR OF ONE OF THE BEST STADIUMS EVER. I LOVE THIS BOOK. EXCELLENT READING. WRIGLEY BROUGHT TO LIFE IN A BOOK. GREAT BUY.

i am a sox's fan but this book makes me love the chicago cubs magnificent building. It brings you behind the sceens and shows little secrets about the park. Great book.

This review originally appeared on my Weblog:...

While Providence may not have had a major league team since 1884, in R.D. Rosen's world, Providence is a major league team, home to the Providence Jewels, along with an architectural treasure of a ball park located somewhere around India Point park.

Rosen has written a series of mysteries featuring Harvey Blissberg, a former Providence Jewel player turned detective turned motivational speaker. Blissberg is a great detective character- by turns blustery, unsure of himself, and self-effacing. He's a very likable character, flaws and all. And of course, seeing places like Wayland Square, Haven Brothers, and the Industrial National Bank Building is very interesting for the Rhode Island savvy among us.

Rosen's geography is a little off (in Dead Ball, he has Routes 95 and 195 confused at points-- 195 passes over Richmond Street, not 95!) but that's a tiny niggle. He gets lots of geographical things right too!

The books are great fun if you like mysteries. The plots move along relatively quickly, and reading about Providence and the mythical Providence Jewels makes you wish we did have a ball club (forget about the headaches of traffic, parking, and corruption for a minute.)

Read the books, you'll be glad you did!

It looks like Providence Jewel outfielder, Moss Cooley, may be ready to do the impossible. His bat is red hot; he's hit in 46 consecutive games, and he's zeroing in on DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak record...the record, experts said, that would never be broken. But not everyone is thrilled by the possibility, and with all his success and notoriety, comes hate mail. When Moss receives a headless lawn jockey with a death threat attached, team management decides to call in the big guns, former Jewel's center fielder, turned private detective, Harvey Blissberg, to protect their star player. But "babysitting" isn't enough for Harvey, and once he sinks his teeth into the case and starts digging, he can't let go until he gets to the truth..... Mystery lovers and baseball enthusiasts will be glad to know that Richard Rosen is finally back, after a long hiatus, with another Harvey Blissberg mystery. Dead Ball is a well paced, intriguing, page turner, full of great characters, vivid scenes, and subtle plot twists that keep you off balance and guessing to the end. But it's Mr Rosen's smart, crisp, intelligent writing, and witty and irreverent dialogue that really makes this novel stand out, and his obvious love of the game, and knowledge of baseball history adds real credibility to the story. With its stunning conclusion, and very satisfying ending, Dead Ball is a novel that should definitely be placed at the top of every mystery fan's "Must Read" list. If you're new to the Harvey Blissberg series, start at the beginning with Strike Three, You're Dead, and read them all. If you're already a groupie, Harvey's back, and better than ever!

Harvey Blisberg was once a good outfielder for the Providence Jewels. After retiring he became a private investigator until all the evil he witnessed threatened to turn him into a madman. He quit to become a motivational speaker, but gave up on that too because he did not believe his own words.

Harvey accepts a job as bodyguard to Jewel's superstar Moss Cooley, a black man closing in on Joe DiMaggio's once unbreakable hitting record. The excellent baseball player has (not surprisingly) begun receiving hate mail but there is one death threat that worries team officials because they think that someone is very serious about harming Moss. As he watches over his client, Harvey realizes that this is not about breaking a record by a black man, but is about Moss and someone connected to him. Harvey places himself in peril by following the serpentine trail from Moss to his tormentor.

Baseball fans are going to love this exciting sports mystery that stars an endearing curmudgeon as a hero. The action is fast-paced and the characters, especially Harvey and Moss, feel genuine. With MEAN STREET, RD Rosen hits a home run to rival that of Maz.

Harriet Klausner

Harvey Blissberg, PI, ex-center fielder is back with his old major league team, the Providence Jewels, who have a new park since he played for them, 15 years before. The Jewels superstar, Moss Cooley, is close to breaking Di Maggio's 56 game hitting streak, but someone is trying to rattle him. The team hires Blissberg to protect Cooley.

Harvey and Moss learn to trust and respect each other and little by little, the mystery is unraveled. I was sure I would dislike this book, since I find professional sports boring and Providence is one of my least favorite cities. I was wrong. Rosen makes the game and the people interesting and exciting again (I stopped following baseball when the Giants left New York, when it was a game and not big business as it is today.) Bits and pieces of baseball history are woven into the story as is Providence and its landmarks including Haven's Brothers, a prototype the first diner.

I always enjoy a good mystery, but this book offered more. Debs Kafka is a professor of Criminal Justice, yet yearns to play professional baseball. Triggered by the murder of a priest, this San Francisco plot swept me away in a whirlwind of criminology, romance, University politics, and baseball trivia, all entwined with the threads of scandal facing the Catholic Church today. A good read! I hope to see more of Debs Kafka on the bookshelves soon.

OK, so you were afraid to get out of school and go face the real world. So you stayed in school. Now you're about to get your Ph.D. and all of a sudden you realize that the world of academia sucks (it really does).

At the same time, your girl friend has told you to kiss-off, and with no good-bye kiss. Then your major professor (and priest) gets murdered. (You know what's been happening with priests and little boys.) So you get a chance to start over, you take a chance and get a shot at your childhood dream, professional baseball.

Then you learn that the killer is now threatening to kill the star pitcher. Even worse, this dastardly fellow is planning this evil crime right in the final days of a tight pennant race. Can you imagine such a thing?

Well, it's certainly a good thing that your Ph.D. is (about to be) in criminology. Guess what happens now....

This book is very easily read and completely entertaining. For those familiar with San Francisco, the landmarks and familiar hot spots mentioned are a nice touch!! I'll be looking for the next Debs Kafka mystery...

Having been a fan of Rob Elias's non-fiction works, I was eager to see how he would fare in his initial foray into the world of murder mystery novels. Set in and about the San Francisco Bay area, from the first chapter on it is clear that Professor Elias and his protagonist Debs Kafka have hit a homerun. This whodunit has something for everyone- religion (specifically Catholicism), baseball, and higher education. Could anything be more timely? The result is a wonderfully engrosssing story that keeps the reader guessing throughout and has a climax that will literally blow you away. Let's hope that the bookcover's notation that this is a "Debs Kafka Mystery" means that we can look forward to more from Mssrs. Elias and Kafka in the future.

Many books on the subject of improving youth sports are written to create awareness of the importance of the subject, but say little of practical value on the way of doing this.

Other books treat the 'how' comprehensively but are as dry as fossilized bones.

The DGC avoids these two pitfalls admirably. It does a great job of describing and explaining the problems that youth sports programs have in the US (and in many other parts of the World), with such feeling, sensitivity and clarity that one cannot avoid being moved by the arguments.

Jim Thompson goes further, though, the DGC translates ideals into practical measures to build exemplary youth sports programs.

My organization is currently using the DGC as a blueprint to develop a soccer program in Mexico, and its lessons and arguments are as useful, relevant and potent here as they seem to be in the US, judging by the growth of The Positive Coaching Alliance.

The premise of the book is that winning is not a bad thing. It's not necessarily the only thing however. Thompson uses real life examples from youth through professional, where focusing on the positive, correcting the negative, and focus on improving have helped teams be successful.

It is our job as youth coaches to make sure we are building solid citizens, teaching them life lessons through sports, and helping them become the best athlete they can be. Winning happens to be a great side effect of this approach!

The book is great for coaches and parents alike!

Discussions of character in sports hinge on two sometimes competing beliefs. One holds that sports build character, the other that sports reveal it.

The case can be made that both ideas are valid. Character is regularly revealed in the way that players, coaches, parents and leaders of youth sports organizations (YSOs) conduct themselves on and off the field.

The "Sports Builds Character" belief is a trickier proposition. Who is to question that sports provides a wonderful setting for the development of poise, confidence, determination, resilience, self-sacrifice, courage? The list goes on, and it is not a coincidence that a strong involvement in sports was the common feature of those who tried to take back the plane on 9/11. Yet every Positive Life Skill associated with sports has a counterpart that can be learned equally well. And often more easily. If you can learn fair play and sportsmanship, you can also learn to cheat. If you can learn about commitment, you can also learn to quit on yourself and your teammates. Accountability and accepting responsibility: making excuses. Again, the list goes on.

Many of the adults involved in sports simply assume, based on their own experience, that the positive side of these character traits will emerge. In fact, without a concerted effort to use sports to teach positive Life Lessons, you might as well be flipping a coin.

Attention to these issues is a major focus of "The Double Goal Coach", the latest book by Jim Thompson. The author is founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance ..., an organization based at Stanford University which seeks "to transform the culture of youth sports so that sports can transform youth."

Like many books on the state of youth sports, Thompson chronicles the excesses. What sets the book apart are solutions to these problems based on research in the fields of education and sports psychology as well as lessons in organizational culture drawn from the business world. Theory then becomes practice through the presentation of many practical tools for establishing and maintaining a positive culture for youth sports. Coaches, parents and the leaders of YSO's will find things here that can be put to immediate use.

What is a Double Goal Coach? He or she is a coach who wants to win. Thompson makes clear that the Positive Coaching message is not anti-competitive or about "happy talk". This is not an invitation to go out and kick a ball around with Barney. Indeed, at a time when real competitions at Field Day have been reduced to (at most) a 50 yard dash, Thompson sees the competitive sports experience as an increasingly important, and rare, opportunity for the development of positive character traits - the second, and more important, goal of the Double Goal Coach. Because it's the character traits that will endure long after the ball's gone into the closet.

There are three elements to Double Goal Coaching. The first seeks to redefine winning, changing the definition from one based only on results (the "win at all costs" model, or waac - which so often becomes wacko!) to a "mastery approach" based on effort, learning, and a positive view of the value of mistakes. The essential difference in the approaches has to do with control. Results are so much in the control of others; with a mastery approach, control belongs to the athlete. What's interesting, though, is the research that shows that a mastery approach actually produces better performance than one where the focus is primarily on the scoreboard.

Next comes the concept of Honoring the Game. This is largely a proactive view of sportsmanship issues, based on what you do rather than what you don't do. Honoring the game involves developing and demonstrating respect for Rules, Opponents, Officials, Teammates, and one's Self (ROOTS).

The third element of the Double Goal model involves "Filling the Emotional Tank", motivation through encouragement and positive reinforcement. Again, the book provides a number of useful tools for coaches.

There is also a section of the book for Sports Parents. Thompson promotes the notion of the "Second Goal Parent", whose primary task is to be unconditionally supportive of their child, whose focus is on those Life Lessons and positive character traits, who recognize that their child's participation in sports belongs to the child, and who leave coaching to the coaches.

Thompson advocates a "systems approach" to developing positive cultures for youth sports, and his organization provides an integrated set of workshops for coaches, parents and leaders of YSOs. Where that's not in place, "The Double Goal Coach" will give the individual coach many ways create a more enjoyable environment for his or her team, and one where the players are much more likely to reach their potential as athletes. That a Double Goal approach will also be much more enjoyable and rewarding for the coach is no insignificant bonus.

This book covers some of the same topics as Thompson's classic, Positive Coaching. However, it has some new ideas in it, and also has some lessons learned since Positive Coaching was written. It also has a handbook-type approach - it gives you example talks, helps you plan a practice and also shows you ways to help you acquire Positive Coaching skills. I have found all of Jim Thompson's books enjoyable and enlightening.

The book shows aspiring artists how to draw with ease by following the step by step method in this book. The body is shown in motion performing all sorts of sports. One can learn to draw the body in motion with this book's great examples.

This is probably one of the best in the "How to Draw series..." The pictures in this book are very easy to follow and results can be expected. The book seems to have a "thesis" if you will, the goal is to teach the patron how the muscles of the human body are to be drawn, and how they move in different actions and by the end of the book you can expect to be very good at it.

Be sure to do each drawing numerous times, you will see your improvement and get motivated for other drawings.

I recommend this book to everyone; even the most novice of artists can enjoy it.

In My Humble Opinion

I liked drawing hockey, basketball, football, karate and fencing the best. It was easy when you followed the diagrams. Now I can draw them better without the book too. I liked learning how to draw all the sports, but I haven't got all of them yet. (Susie - age 8) The book provided good visual step by step drawings to follow, to show how the body parts can be added and changed. There was a lot of variety of sports depicted. It kept her attention for quite awhile! (Her mom)

I bought a book called Draw 50 Athletes. First I started with the easy things. Then I started working on harder things. Then I could draw anything. This book is good for kids who like drawing and sports. I think this book is good for kids and I recommned it.

What an informative and fun book to read! The author presents great quotes, mental skills, and winning strategies by the best minds in baseball for achieving excellence in sports, business, and the game of life.

This book is a must have for coaches and players alike. I own and run Centerfield Baseball Academy and this book is like having the best coaches in the country in my place 24-7!. If you are a coach it is amazing to have such an organized blue print for success at your fingertips. As a player who got to the professional leval I could have been twice the player and teammate had I read Dugout Wisdom. A young player who reads this book will get tips to exponentially improve his game and, what's more important, he will relate to his coach and team in a way he never has before. This is worth every penny. ...

I bought Jim Murphy's DUGOUT WISDOM because I wanted to learn about managing a winning business team. I don't confess to know a lot about baseball but after reading a few pages of DUGOUT WISDOM, I realized that this is not just a book for baseball coaches and fans. It's a book for anyone wanting to be a champion, wanting to be the best that they can be in all that they do whether it be in sports, business, personal life, anything. DUGOUT WISDOM is very practical.

I recommend DUGOUT WISDOM for anyone who wants to gain wisdom and be motivated, challenged, and inspired!

The amount of quality managers and coaches he interviewed is outstanding, and putting it all together with the ten principles really clarified for me what the top managers do. As a business professional I feel I can transfer much of these principles into my life, because we're all dealing with people, whether it's sports or business. I really liked the chapter on Forming a Covenant, and having a spiritual base, which is really inner strength. I was especially intrigued to find out what Dusty Baker had to say, as I feel he's one of the best at dealing with people and forming a winning team from different personalities. Highly recommended.

My only complaint about this book is the $35.00 price tag for a paperback book. Otherwise I believe the idea of choosing eight owners who shaped the course of baseball is a great idea for a book. I have to admit I have never heard of Helene Britton, a one-time owner of the St. Louis Cardinals. The choices of Walter O'Malley, Bill Veeck, Charlie Finley, and "Gussie" Busch should be very familiar to anyone who has followed the game the past 50 years. Charles Ebbets, who proclaimed, "Baseball is in its infancy.", Clark Griffith, who hated doubleheaders because fans got to see two games for the price of one, and the recently elected member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Barney Dreyfuss (along with O'Malley) are all worthy choices for this book. I found most of the anecdotes about the individuals in this book have been covered in other books, but the reader is provided with a good summary of their careers. On page 79 the authors state that Eddie "Kid" Foster had such great bat control that Clark Griffith allowed a runner at first to go at will and "was duly credited with introducing a new hit-and-run play to baseball." However, the much respected baseball writer Fred Lieb in his book entitled The Baltimore Orioles credit John McGraw and Willie Keeler with the introduction of the hit-and-run play in the 1890s. You will find that many of the labor problems that plagued baseball in the 1970s were really nothing new dating back to before the turn of the 20th century. We read plenty of books about the men who play the game. Take a seat and see the game from the owners' point of view. I think you will find it to be quite interesting.

I thought this book was written for baseball experts, for those who know bios, stats, names and numbers. Was I wrong! I do enjoy baseball, but I am far from an expert on names, numbers or stats. Actually, the book had a lot of that kind of information, but it is tucked inside such interesting stories that you don't feel like you are being smothered in dry facts and numbers. Every chapter, a story unto itself, gives you a look into the team owners - a little about their personal life, but mostly how they acquired their teams, how they related to their teams, and the relationships with the other team owners. Also, every one of the owners in the book has made some special contribution to the game, and I kept finding myself saying, "Wow! I didn't know that!" I would recommend the book to any baseball fan and to anyone who has an interest in baseball and would just enjoy a good read.

The collaborative effort of Burton and Benita Boxerman, Ebbets To Veeck To Busch: Eight Owners Who Shaped Baseball is a grand survey of eight remarkable individuals whose time, fortunes, and effort invested in the baseball teams they owned helped shape the course of this great American sport throughout the 20th Century. Especially focusing on the contributions that each one made to their respective teams, as well as to the sport as a whole (rather than centering upon their financial or personal lives), Ebbets To Veeck To Busch is a remarkable and highly commended study of influence and the fruits of hard labors at the highest level of athletic team management and baseball club ownership.

I've been a baseball fan for years, and have always enjoyed stories that provided insight into the players, coaches and managers in the game. However, I didn't realize how little I knew about baseball owners until I read this book. I found a wealth of knowledge about eight of the most influential baseball owners, with enough information and anecdotes to give me a feel for their personalities. This is a great book for fans that want a better perspective on the history of the game of baseball.

I enjoyed this book, but I was disappointed at the ending. I won't spoil it for anyone planning to read the book, but I found the conclusion unsatisfying, not at all neat and happily-ever-after-ish.

Excellent! I couldn't put it down. A whodunitt. A beautiful blond model gets an oppurttunity as a main star in a movie, but she feels somone is out to get her. Soon, she is being attacked by large mobs as the cause of the death of another movie star. Who did it? I'm not saying anything. Figure it out!

Final Cut is about a girl and her brother who go into film making. Someone can't get a part on the film and wants revenge for the person who killed their sister on set. I won't give the story away, the book is worth reading!

Ryan Phillips and his friends Zeke, Eli, and Miles spend pretty much every afternoon together football out in the field or ping-pong down in Ryan's basement. But now things are different because the four friends are planning on trying out for the junior high basketball team and making the Sligo's Stallions. That means playing in the school's intramural league and the junior high three-on-three tournament to get ready to impress the coach, not to mention Benny the Brain, who is always keeping stats for the coach. But Ryan is getting worried that he will not make the cut and even more worried how his friends will feel if none of them make "The Final Cut."

I have read several of Fred Bowen's baseball books in the AllStar SportStory series, so this is the first basketball book. Not surprisingly the approach is the same, with Bowen using the real world examples of Michael Jordan and Bill Russell to set up the important lesson at the end of this juvenile story. But as always what sticks out for me in Bowen's stories is how the way to play the game permeates the story. Ryan's main rival is Drew Moyers, who was on the team the previous year, and who is one of the big scorers in the intramural league. But Drew is a gunner, who does not pass the ball, and that is not what wins basketball games. The point is being made by some of the commercials featuring LeBron James, but it is nice to see it being made it books like this as well. Bowen makes a point that if you grab rebounds, pass the ball, steal the ball, take high percentage shots, and hit your free throws, that you are just as important to your team winning the game.

The back of the book includes "The Real Story" about Michael Jordan being cut from his high school basketball team when he was a sophomore. His disappointment at not making the varsity fueled a year long effort to improve his skills, which is the lesson that Bowen wants to underscore (of course, the realist in me has to point out that growing 5 inches was a big help for MJ as well). A lot of kids have probably heard that story, but Bowen adds the story of Bill Russell, who shared time as the last player on his junior high varsity basketball team before going on to be the most winningest player in basketball history. Of course, I shudder to think of how many young readers will have never heard of Bill Russell.

This book is invaluable for pitching coaches and parents who want to give good instruction in pitching with a priority on good mechanics to prevent injury. As a parent and coach I know that it is critical to teach proper mechanics to young pitchers to insure best performance and the least chance for injury. This book and others by Tom House provide all the information you need.

This is a good supplemental handbook for the pitching coach who works with older, high-school and college pitchers. It has good drills and theory for younger pitchers, but the scheduling/daily menus toward the back are a little much for a little-leaguer.

The book profiles workouts and exercises for players ages 13 and beyond. The book goes into extreme detail on muscle regeneration verse pitching and workouts between pitching dates. This is a must if you want to stay healthy and get the most out of your body.

To really appreciate the programs outlined in this book, you must be committed to them, as they can become quite time consuming. It makes the most sense for pitchers already competing at some level, so they can complement their pitching with the exercise routine, which will allow them to last longer and perform better. The in depth workouts really allow the player to appreciate all of the important factors that influence pitching ability. Altogether, the exercises promote good mechanics, isolate important muscles, and allow the pitcher to think about the pitching motion while working out. By dedicating oneself to such a nuanced program, a pitcher can gain not only physically but also mentally, as this book promotes smart pitching.

I bought this book, after it came out in 1993, from a terrific "retro" collectible shop in the Century City shopping center called "Raffia", which tragically exists no longer.

I don't remember why, but for some reason, I decided at the time that I would not actually open up the book and read it until after the Giants won a World Series.

Eleven years and a lifetime of heartbreak later, I realize that the Giants will win a World Series on the day after the Messiah comes riding into Jerusalem on a white donkey, blowing his shofar.

I recently found the book again and realized that I would never get to read it if I actually waited as long as I had originally intended so I just finished it.

One of the reasons why it's an interesting read is because it's written at the dawn of a new age in Giants history - on the heels of the aborted sale and move of the franchise to Tampa Bay, Florida and the subsequent purchase of the contractual services of one Barry Lamar Bonds. So you can probably take almost all of the franchise batting records that are listed at the back of the book and throw them to the wind.

And speaking of the wind, the book also predates by a few years the relocation of home field from Candlestick Park - termed by Bruce Jenkins as "the great wind machine" - to Pacific Bell Park in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Candlestick Park was much maligned as a baseball field in its time, but it looks quite magnificent in the photographs that the authors include in the text. And as they point out, it held up to the 1989 Series earthquake. Fans and reporters who diss Candlestick today are weather wimps and ingrates.

The book is a retrospective of Giants history starting in 1885 from their magnificent beginning as the New York Gothams ("My big fellow! My Giants!", owner Jim Mutrie is supposed to have triumphantly exclaimed, according to legend, after one particularly satisfying victory) to the glory days in the first 30 years of the 20th century under Manager John McGraw, King Carl Hubbell, Bill Terry, and Mel Ott to the lean years of the 1940's when the war depleted their roster to rebirth and redemption in the 1950's - courtesy (in large part) of Leo Durocher, Bobby Thomson, and Willie Mays - even as economic considerations were moving both the Giants and their historical rivals, the Dodgers, inexorably away from New York and toward the West Coast.

The 1950's might have even been more glorious on the field if the Korean War hadn't exacted two years of military obligation from Willie Mays and if Monte Irvin hadn't broken his leg in a pre-season 1952 exhibition game.

The book also captures the empty glory of the Giants San Francisco history - a lot of great teams; a lot of great players; a lot of close calls and nothing left at the end of any season but a collapsed one-horse shay. The authors perfectly summarize the history of the 1960's Giants with the observation, "It may be that no team has ever had so much talent and worked so hard and come away with so little to show for it".

Little did the authors know that, ten years after they wrote those words, they could be recycled to describe the Giants of the 1990's and 2000's. The substantive questions that they ask at the end of the book about the team's future can now be answered, "No."

The book's feature point is its collection of historical photographs, including, for example, a 1914 Cracker Jack card of Christy Mathewson, an art deco photographic cover of the 1933 World Series (Giants-Senators) program, and a 1952 program, on the cover of which Durocher reads to a cherubic Giant player the story of "The Little Miracle of Coogan's Bluff", and much much more. Having this book is the next best thing to owning your own souvenir shop.

As for the writing, it is flawed in some instances and brilliant in others. The description of the end of the 1962 World Series is so agonizingly good that I can't read it again. On the other hand, the authors several times commit the Giant mistake of saying that the team almost moved to Minnesota in 1976. While the relocation of the Giants and Dodgers to Minneapolis and St. Paul had been considered in the 1950's, in 1976, Minnesota was (and still is) barely able to support the Twins, let alone a second major league team. It was Toronto that the Giants almost moved to, having been tentatively sold to LaBatt's Brewery. LaBatt's eventually bought the Blue Jays, who would bring two world championships to the city of Toronto. It makes one think.

And while 1974-1985, as the authors say, was almost entirely a dismal chapter in the team's history, the one exception to that was the scrappy band of overachievers, led by Vida Blue, Jack Clark, Willie McCovey and Mike Ivie that made a serious run at a vastly more talented Dodger team in 1978. If John "The Count" Montefusco (for accuracy's sake, his nickname contained one letter too many) could have replicated his 1975 and 1976 performances in 1978, the team could have pulled it off. Failure to even mention the 1978 team is a glaring omission (there is one 1979 photograph of Jack Clark sliding home).

Failing to mention the 1982 team -- the one that contended into the final week of the season and ultimately took away (thanks largely to Joe Morgan) the satisfaction of playing "spoiler" to the Dodgers -- was also a glaring omission.

And - it's not the authors' fault - but while Will Clark's place in Giant history of the late 1980's must be acknowledged, referring to him as a possible future Hall of Famer now seems laughable in retrospect. And his endorsement of the book on its back cover - "This is a must for all Giants fans, past and present" - turns out to be a bitterly ironical demerit.

Some of Slick Will's more cynical critics now wish that he had taken more of an interest in the Giants during the last season that he played for them.

THIS BOOK IS GREAT FOR ANY BASEBALL FAN. THE PHOTOS AND OTHER MATERIAL USED TO SHOW THE HISTORY OF THE GIANTS IS OUTSTANDING. I THINK THIS ONE OF THE BEST BOOK I HAVE READ FOR MEMORIES AND HISTORY OF THE BELOVED GIANTS. READ IT YOU WON'T BE SORRY

This book is a must read for any fan of the greatest team in baseball, the San Francisco GIANTS! Beautifully orchestrated, full-blown color photos and fantastic stories of the Giants rich history dating back to Coogan's Bluff.

If anybody knows how to contact Bruce Chadwick or David M. Spindel then please forward their contact info. right away. (650.988.9290) or ryan@altoscan.com

This is a great book if you're into Baseball history. Instead of illustrations, the stories are accompanied by photos of actual artifacts from this great game! A must for any baseball fan!