I’m often asked for suggestions for good baseball books, and I struggle to come up with good suggestions. Many are leaden; a lot are full of the sort of cliché-ridden garbage that has so thoroughly turned me off of newspapers; and a lot are just poorly written, too. So I’m pleased to be able to offer a very strong recommendation for a new, unusual entry in the pantheon of baseball books: Derek Zumsteg’s The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
First, a disclaimer: I know Derek personally and have for something like seven years. We were both writers at BP around the same time, and while we definitely don’t agree on every topic, I have always enjoyed Derek’s writing. I still think if his book sucked, I’d say so, or at least I wouldn’t recommend it, but I thought the connection was something I should mention.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the book, ripping through it in two days despite the fact that I was coming down with a bad respiratory infection and read the last section while I had a fever of 102.5. Zumsteg splits his history of cheating into three sections, and unfortunately the first section – devoted to shady-but-not-really-cheating things, like groundskeepers’ tricks to help the home team – is the least interesting, although it’s certainly well-written, and does discuss John McGraw, one of my favorite historical baseball figures. But we want sordid details, like spitballs and gambling scandals, and sections two (the illegal) and three (the awful) deliver, which gave me the feeling that the book was accelerating as I read it. The section on Billy Martin, a manager I remember well from my Yankee-fan childhood, was a particular treat.
My one big criticism of the book is the lack of footnotes or endnotes, although Derek tells me that its omission was an editorial decision. It’s too bad, because the book clearly has a lot of research behind it, and I often find other interesting reads by checking out the notes or bibliography of a book I’ve enjoyed. My guess is that a lot of readers won’t mind the absence of the notes, certainly not if your primary interest is in a good, fast-moving baseball read.
This sounds like a good book, I think I’ll check it out when I have time. As for the footnotes, I’d have to concur that I generally prefer them. Separately, and a bit off-topic, you mentioned once that you had read In Search of Lost Time. I am just finishing Don Quixote now and was wondering what you thought of it. Also, I was wondering if you read it in French or in translation. I want to read it in French but I have only recently taught myself French and my reading has been limited to academic research in my field of study. Any comments you have on it in terms of accessibility in French would be helpful.
Fran – I read Don Quixote in college and enjoyed it, although I remember the second volume really dragged (it was originally published as two separate works, a novel and then a sequel designed to quash the unauthorized sequels making the rounds). You might want to check out a recent takeoff on Don Quixote called Tilting at Windmills
, a very witty light parody where Cervantes himself is a central character, as is “the Old Knight.”
As for Proust … I’ve read the first volume and the first part (At Mme Swann’s) of the second volume, all in English. I can’t imagine reading it in French; Proust’s vocabulary was enormous and he was fond of esoteric words, and his sentences defy societal norms on length and structure. I find reading him in English to be a challenge, so unless you’re truly fluent in French, I’d stay stick with a translation. Look for the Penguin translation of Swann’s Way
(the first volume); Lydia Davis was the translator.