When I picked up Zack Hample’s new book – Watching Baseball Smarter – I was really looking forward to gaining some new insight into how to watch a ballgame and get something totally different out of it. I’ve been watching baseball almost my entire life – and I felt like I had a good idea […]

Spitballs, corked bats, sign stealing and, yes, even steroids – they’re all part of baseball, and they’re all part of Derek Zumsteg’s new book – The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball. Checking in at just over 250 pages, it’s amazing how people have tried to get the upper hand throughout the history of baseball. From hard […]

If you read Mychael Lewis’ Moneyball, you probably felt pretty smart afterwards. At the time, it was charting some new waters of baseball writing – a first hand look inside the mind of a major league general manager and what he looks for when scouting talent. Factor in that it had to be done on […]

Taking someone to their first baseball game can be a pretty fun experience. You get to reignite your passion for the game by showing someone all the intricacies of baseball – the hit and run, stealing a base, and the magic that is baseball. But inevitably the time comes when the newbie asks you: “so, […]

It measures in at just about 3 1/2″ long and 2 1/2″ wide, and is only about half an inch thick – but it’s one of the best books I own. In fact, it’s the only baseball book I keep on my desk at work, because it is filled with short quotes and pictures that […]

This is the third book I’ve read in the past year about Bill James – the guy credited with developing the current storm around baseball statistics – you might be familiar with the term “sabermetrics,” well that’s what Bill James is deemed the father of. And frankly – I’m not crazy about this one. In […]