HARVEY FROMMER ON SPORTS
THE BOOK REVIEW
Babe Ruth: Remembering the Bambino in Stories, Photos and Memorabilia
If you are looking for book for browsing, for studying, for coffee table placement, for ogling - Babe Ruth: Remembering the Bambino in Stories, Photos and Memorabilia by Julia Ruth (one of the Babe's granddaughters and Bill Gilbert (talented author who has been around the baseball block quite a few times) is the book for you. Reasonably priced at $35.00, hardcover, 176 pages with 125 photos and illustrations and 10 removable facsimiles this terrific tome is a keeper.
The facsimiles themselves are worth the price - -they include the Babe's birth certificate, his contract with the Red Sox for 1916 and 1917, a five cent scorecard from opening day at Braves Field in Boston, a movie program for the 1948 film "The Babe Ruth Story."
"The End of Baseball" by Peter Schilling, Jr. (Ivan R. Dee, 352 pages, $25.00) is an imaginative, thought-provoking novel. It puts forward Bill Veeck returning from the Army with one leg missing after Guadalcanal. He becomes the owner of the Philadelphia Athletics and gets rid of white players and stocks his roster with Negro League stars. The book is fiction but is created against a backdrop of real life characters. Just a terrific read!
"Dark Side of the Diamond" by Roger Abrams (Rounder, $24.95, 216 pages) is a look into the sordid habits, misdeeds, bad guy instincts of famous flawed baseball notables like John J. McGraw, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds and others.
It is as its sub-title says about "gambling, violence, drugs and alcoholism in the national pastime.
"Warrior Girls" by Michael Sokolove (Simon and Schuster, $25.00, 308 pages) is all about a first class job of investigative reporting into injuries in women's sports. The book is as timely a today's headlines and long overdue.
==
Harvey Frommer, now in his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books, is the author of 40 of them including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Red Sox Vs Yankee: The Great Rivalry." Frommer's REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) an oral/narrative history was published in September 2008 as a reprint version of his SHOELESS JOE AND RAGTIME BASEBALL.
Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and appears on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.
**Call for Fenway Memories - now working on "Remembering
*****Fenway Park" - will feature stories first game attended, marker moments, odd events, tales of a special player at the Fens, architectural features... Please contact me by e-mail if you have something to contribute. Harvey
