Dirk Hayhurst joined Rick Ralph on the Rona Roundtable on TSN 1290 Winnipeg last week discussing his newest book “Bigger Than The Game”.
I have enjoyed all of Hayhurst’s books and included them on my list of Baseball Books for Opening Day
Category: Books
Baseball Books for Opening Day
Baseball books are some of my favourite sports books, the grind of a 162 game season, the difficulty of working from Class A Ball to the Majors and the stories involved are always entertaining and hilarious.
Here are my favourite sports books just in time for opening day
The Dirk Hayhurst Collection – The Bullpen Gospels, Out of My League, & Bigger Than The Game
A fantastic collection of books that I finished in about a week combined. Dirk Hayhurst starts off from college, takes you through getting drafted, into the minor leagues and shows the hard work that gets you into the majors. All three are awesome reads with great stories about playing professional baseball.
Doug Glanville talks about the pressure of being a first round draft pick to the glitz and glamour of being a Major League Ballplayer.
Matt McCarthy – Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit
Matt McCarthy was a left-handed pitcher from Yale and a 26th round pick of the Anaheim Angels. He wrote about his year in the minors with Utah before entering Harvard Medical School.
Michael Lewis – Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
By now everyone has heard of Moneyball, how Billy Beane lead the Oakland A’s into the statistical revolution.
Jose Canseco – Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big
When this book came out many questioned whether or not anything written in here was true. As time passed many people wound up saying ” Canseco was right”. Certainly an enjoyable read about the life of a a baseball player’s rise to stardom with the aid of PEDs.
Jonah Keri on his book Up, Up and Away
Author Jonah Keri joined Rick Ralph on the Rona Roundtable earlier this week to discuss his new book “Up, Up & Away: The Kid, The Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, Le Grand Orange, Youppi!, The Crazy Business of Baseball & the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos”.
About the book: The definitive history of the Montreal Expos by the definitive Expos fan, the New York Times bestselling sportswriter and Grantlandcolumnist Jonah Keri.
2014 is the 20th anniversary of the strike that killed baseball in Montreal, and the 10th anniversary of the team’s move to Washington, DC. But the memories aren’t dead–not by a long shot. The Expos pinwheel cap is still sported by Montrealers, former fans, and by many more in the US and Canada as a fashion item. Expos loyalists are still spotted at Blue Jays games and wherever the Washington Nationals play (often cheering against them). Every year there are rumours that Montreal–as North America’s largest market without a baseball team–could host Major League Baseball again.
There has never been a major English-language book on the entire franchise history. There also hasn’t been a sportswriter as uniquely qualified to tell the whole story, and to make it appeal to baseball fans across Canada AND south of the border. Jonah Keri writes the chief baseball column for Grantland, and routinely makes appearances in Canadian media such as The Jeff Blair Show, Prime Time Sports and Off the Record. The author of the New York Times baseball bestseller The Extra 2% (Ballantine/ESPN Books), Keri is one of the new generation of high-profile sports writers equally facile with sabermetrics and traditional baseball reporting. He has interviewed everyone for this book (EVERYONE: including the ownership that allowed the team to be moved), and fans can expect to hear from just about every player and personality from the Expos’ unforgettable 35 years in baseball. Up, Up, and Away is already one of the most anticipated sports books of next year.