Baseball Books: Biographies, History, and Literature

Way back in 1859, the first book devoted entirely to the still-evolving sport of baseball, The Base Ball Player’s Pocket Companion (notice the separation of base and ball) was published in Boston. Since then, tens of thousands of baseball books have made their way into print. Since the 1970’s, well over 200 baseball books have been published each year, and some years have had as many as three times that number of titles!

So, tapping into the genre of baseball books reveals a vast reservoir of literature to peruse. But what about subject matter and literary quality? While this site will remain focused on the best that baseball literature has to offer (we’d rather talk about the books that SHOULD be read, rather than the ones that could be skipped), it is true that a good baseball book has been written on just about every subject one could possibly imagine, and many on subjects that might seem unfathomable.

Book reviews and more coming soon...