Holiday Reads, 2007: Part II

“How Bill James “Changed Our View of Baseball,” "A Well-Paid Slave,” “Harvard Boys,” “Gretzky to Lemieux,”etc.

The seasons come and go, the books on sports, likewise. Here for your reading edification and enjoyment, another batch of entries from the crowded field of tomes on sports.

“How Bill James Changed Our View of Baseball” (Acta Sports, $19.95, 144 pages hardcover) is an unabashed and mostly deserved batch of raves about the whys and wherefores about the lifetime of work by the man from Kansas who today lives in Boston and is Senior Baseball Operations Advisor for the Boston Red Sox. James and some of his friends (Alan Schwarz, John Thorn, etc.) have a go at it explaining (or at least trying to) the work of the man TIME magazine named one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.”

“A Well-Paid Slave” by Brad Snyder (Plume, $14.00, paper) is the story of Curt Flood and his lawsuit that broke new ground and changed the face of baseball ushering in free agency. Absorbing stuff.

“Harvard Boys” by John Wolff and Rick Wolff (Skyhorse Publishing, $24.95, 336 pages, hardcover) intermingles life at Harvard, a father, a son, dreams of making it big in the big leagues of baseball. Both made it out of Harvard and into the minors. Their stories are appealing.

“Gretzky to Lemieux” by Ed Willes (McClelland & Stewart, $24.95, 256 pages, hardcover) is a one of a kind look back at the 1987 Canada Cup - three games between Canada and the former Soviet Union. Brilliantly written, jammed with stories from those who were there – this book is a hockey lover’s heaven.

Cecil Harris and Larryette Kyle-DeBose have done a creditable job in “Charging the Net” (Ivan R. Dee, $26.95, 271 pages, hardcover) a book that is as its sub-title proclaims: “A history of blacks in tennis from Althea Gibson to the Williams Sisters.”

“War Without Death” by Mark Maske (Penguin, $25.95, 400 pages, hardcover) by the Washington Post sports columnist is a no holds barred look back at the life in a year’s competition in the National Football League East. In depth, clearly and cogently presented. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.