Summer baseball reading

My vacation reading this summer included two baseball books (and some others which I hope to write on later).

The first (and the one I'd most strongly recommend) is Henry Thomas's biography of Walter Johnson, Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train. This is the work of Johnson's grandson, written in 1998. It is thorough, very well-researched, and exceptionally well-written. Imagine a current sports figure whose biography features no scandals, and essentially no one ready to say a bad thing about the subject! The story of the famous 1924 season (in which the Washington Senators, a miserable team for nearly Johnson's whole career, finally won the World Series) is very affecting. I also discovered that, unlike most successful baseball players, he was probably a better manager than generally given credit for. Anybody who's interested in the early era of professional baseball and particularly the transition to the Babe Ruth years will enjoy this book.

More of a historical curiosity, but a book I'd always meant to read, is Pitching in a Pinch. This 1912 book was purportedly written by New York Giant great Christy Mathewson but really ghostwritten by sportswriter John N. Wheeler, and the latter's introduction to the book doesn't show much of an effort to deviate from "Christy's" style in the rest of the book. It's still interesting but mostly now for students of baseball history or those very keen on the era. Three things about the book jumped out at me as unusual:
- how many contemporary books of the type will include a whole section on umpires?
- where else are you going to find out the proper use of the term "bullyragging"?
- imagine a book whose point (other than to merchandise the nominal author, but in a gentle early 20th century kind of way) is to suggest that pitching success might flow from strength of character!
All in all, very enjoyable, but not profound and not rigorous - think of it as high-class advertising.