The Book Review

 “The Amazing Tale of Mr. Herbert and His  Fabulous Cowboys Baseball Club” and Other Sports Tomes

      Big and beautiful, carefully conceived and masterfully organized, “The Amazing Tale of Mr. Herbert and His  Fabulous Cowboys Baseball Club” by DJ Stout (University of Texas Press, $34.95, 250 pages, coffee table Texas sized) is one of those books for your sports library that you keep.

   Sub-titled “An Illustrated History of the Best Little Semipro Baseball team in Texas,” this work about the Alpine Cowboys is part cultural, all baseball. In the 1940s and 1950s mostly every small town in the USA had bragging rights to a baseball team as did the Big Bend Cowboys. The team played on Kokernor Field, a facility that rivaled many big league parks and many Cowboy players wound up as major leaguers

   “The Amazing Tale of Mr. Herbert and His  Fabulous Cowboys Baseball Club” is a page turner, a wonderful addition to sports book history, a grand slam home run.

     "The Most Memorable Games in Giants History" by Bernard Corbett and Jim Baker (Bloomsbury, $24.00,  372 pages) is an oral history of some of 13 top games ever of the legendary franchise. Such as Pat Summerall, Tucker Frederickson, George Martin, Phil Simms, Kerry Collins and Michael Strahan bring back the times of accomplishment and futility.

     From Bison Books comes "Football's Last Iron Men" by Norman L. Macht ($14.95, 154 pages, paper) focuses in detail on 1934, Yale vs. Princeton, and a very stunning upset. Macht, author of more than 30 books, in vivid detail and with a marching narrative, shows how eleven Yale Elis on November 17, 1934 played the entire game with grit and guile -  and defeated the previously unbeaten Bulldogs, 7-0. HIGHY RECOMMENDED

    “Men of Kent” by Rick Rinehart (Lyons Press, $14.95, 210 pages, paper) is as its sub-title proclaims a book about “Ten Boys, A Fast Boat, And The Coach Who Made Them Champions.” If you are into the sport of rowing – this book is a must read.