Baseball Historical

It’s the summer of 1973, and Joe Castle is the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone has ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas, dazzles Chicago Cubs fans as he hits home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shatters all rookie records.

Last Days of Summer is the story of Joey Margolis, neighborhood punching bag, growing up goofy and mostly fatherless in Brooklyn in the early 1940s. A boy looking for a hero, Joey decides to latch on to Charlie Banks, the all-star third basemen for the New York Giants. But Joey's chosen champion doesn't exactly welcome the extreme attention of a persistent young fan with an overactive imagination. Then again, this strange, needy kid might be exactly what Banks needs.

Stephen Satlow is an eight-year-old boy living in Brooklyn, New York, which means he only cares about one thing - the Dodgers. Steve and his father spend hours reading the sports pages and listening to games on the radio. Aside from an occasional run-in with his teacher, life is pretty simple for Steve. But then Steve hears a rumor that an African-American family is moving to his all-Jewish neighborhood. It's 1948 and some of his neighbors are against it. Steve knows this is wrong. His hero, Jackie Robinson, broke the color barrier in baseball the year before.

Troy Soos' sparkling Mickey Rawlings Baseball mysteries pack early 1900's baseball lore and colorful period details into baffling whodunits. Hunting a Detroit Tiger vividly brings to life the turbulent post-World War I days when the nation partied with bootleg liquor and labor unrest swept the nation with violence.

Reporting for his first day as a Boston Red Sox player, Mickey Rawlings discovers a faceless body in the empty stadium. When police name him as their suspect, he knows he must clear his name or give up baseball and his freedom. But nameless foes are trying to silence him with warnings that become increasingly dangerous. A member of the Society for American Baseball Research, Troy Soos creates delightfully authentic ballplayers and places them in believable, colorful settings.

When local baseball player Junior Jones receives death threats over the color of his skin, the team's wealthy owner hires Sam Rockwell to solve the case and stop a murder before it happens. Sam goes undercover as a minor league pitcher to strike out the culprit. Follow the clues along with Sam's curmudgeonly ghost of a father Frank Rockwell, and Sam's wife Amelia, who holds a secret that will forever change the lives of the entire Rockwell family. It's another laugh-filled, madcap mystery in the warm, witty 1950's Hollywood-style of author Jason Anspach.

No immortal in the history of baseball retired so young, so well, or so completely as Sandy Koufax. After compiling a remarkable record from 1962 to 1966 that saw him lead the National League in ERA all five years, win three Cy Young awards, and pitch four no-hitters including a perfect game, Koufax essentially disappeared. Save for his induction into the Hall of Fame and occasional appearances at the Dodgers training camp, Koufax has remained unavailable, unassailable, and unsullied.

Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans.

Wait Till Next Yearis the story of a young girl growing up in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, when owning a single-family home on a tree-lined street meant the realization of dreams, when everyone knew everyone else on the block, and the children gathered in the streets to play from sunup to sundown. The neighborhood was equally divided among Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans, and the corner stores were the scenes of fierce and affectionate rivalries.

The only Major League ballplayer whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA, Moe Berg has the singular distinction of having both a 15-year career as a catcher for such teams as the New York Robins and the Chicago White Sox and that of a spy for the OSS during World War II. Here, Dawidoff provides "a careful and sympathetic biography" ( Chicago Sun-Times) of this enigmatic man.

In Peter Golenbock's shocking and revealing first novel, Mickey Mantle tells the hidden story of his life as a baseball hero, and asks for forgiveness from his friends and family. If the revelations in Jim Bouton's Ball Four were the first crack in the Mantle legend, then 7 smashes the myth to reveal the human being within.

Play ball! Jack and Annie aren’t great baseball players... yet! Then Morgan the librarian gives them magical baseball caps that will make them experts. They just need to wear the caps to a special ballgame in Brooklyn, New York. The magic tree house whisks them back to 1947! When they arrive, Jack and Annie find out that they will be batboys in the game - not ballplayers. What exactly does Morgan want them to learn? And what’s so special about this game? They only have nine innings to find out!

Jackie Robinson always loved sports, especially baseball. But he lived at a time before the Civil Rights Movement, when the rules weren't fair to African Americans. Even though Jackie was a great athlete, he wasn't allowed on the best teams just because of the color of his skin. Jackie knew that sports were best when everyone, of every color, played together. He became the first black player in Major League Baseball, and his bravery changed African-American history and led the way to equality in all sports in America.

No immortal in the history of baseball retired so young, so well, or so completely as Sandy Koufax. After compiling a remarkable record from 1962 to 1966 that saw him lead the National League in ERA all five years, win three Cy Young awards, and pitch four no-hitters including a perfect game, Koufax essentially disappeared. Save for his induction into the Hall of Fame and occasional appearances at the Dodgers training camp, Koufax has remained unavailable, unassailable, and unsullied.

What’s a 16-year-old boy to do when he learns that his stepmother and a local judge have murdered his father and now plan to kill him, too? Well, when it’s 1906, and you can play pretty good second base, you join a barn-storming baseball team making its way across Kansas. It also helps that the team is the Kansas City National Bloomer Girls. After all, who’d look for a runaway boy disguised as a girl on a women’s team that competes against town-ball teams of male players? Of course, it’ll take more than long hair, a Spalding glove, and a quick bat to stay alive.

On the 50th anniversary of "The Shot Heard Round the World", Don DeLillo reassembles in fiction the larger-than-life characters who on October 3, 1951, witnessed Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning.

In Peter Schilling's wonderful novel, the extraordinary baseball season of 1944 comes vividly to life. Bill Veeck, the maverick promoter, returned from Guadalcanal with a leg missing and $500 to his name, has hustled his way into buying the Philadelphia Athletics. Hungry for a pennant, young Veeck jettisons the team's white players and secretly recruits the legendary stars of the Negro Leagues, fielding a club that will go down in baseball annals as one of the greatest ever to play the game.

Moe Berg is not a typical baseball player. He's Jewish - very unusual for the major leagues in the 1930s - has a law degree, speaks several languages, and loves traveling the world. He also happens to be a spy for the US government. When World War II begins, Moe trades his baseball career for a life of danger and secrecy. Using his unusual range of skills, he sneaks into enemy territory to gather crucial information that could help defeat the Nazis. But he also has plenty of secrets of his own...

Conor Nash has lived his life with a single purpose - to pitch in the major leagues. He’s been released from professional baseball contracts 10 times over a 16-year career, but he’s overcome every obstacle to finally reach "The Show" when he’s a decade too old. As he faces the specter of injury-forced retirement, he becomes a man neither he nor his wife recognizes. During his career, Conor avoided the trap of alcohol and drugs because his drug was baseball.

It’s 1984, and David is off the couch once more and providing support to the team-building efforts of a publishing start-up at the LA Dodgers Adult Fantasy Camp in Florida. As David seeks the elusive home run that will elevate his love life from the minors, team rivalries simmer, and he is drawn into a web of lies, suspicion, and drug smuggling. Teambuilding becomes less of a goal and more of a necessity as members start to show up dead.