Baseball: A Literary Anthology

Robert Frost never felt more at home in America than when watching baseball "be it in park or sand lot." Full of heroism and heartbreak, the most beloved of American sports is also the most poetic, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents the story of the national adventure as revealed through...

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Robert Frost never felt more at home in America than when watching baseball "be it in park or sand lot." Full of heroism and heartbreak, the most beloved of American sports is also the most poetic, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents the story of the national adventure as revealed through the fascinating lens of the great American game.Philip Roth considers the terrible thrill of the adolescent centerfielder; Richard Ford listens to minor-league baseball on the radio while driving cross-country; Amiri Baraka remembers the joy of watching the Newark Eagles play in the era before Jackie Robinson shattered the color line. Unforgettable portraits of legendary players who have become icons -- Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Hank Aaron -- are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn't hit in any of them."Poems in Baseball: A Literary Anthology include indispensable works whose phrases have entered the language -- Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Franklin P. Adams's "Baseball's Sad Lexicon" -- as well as more recent offerings from May Swenson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Martin Espada. Testimonies from classic oral histories offer insights into the players who helped enshrine the sport in the American imagination. Spot reporting by Heywood Broun and Damon Runyon stands side by side with journalistic profiles that match baseball legends with some of our finest writers: John Updike on Ted Williams, Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Red Smith on Lefty Grove.

Introduction by Nicholas Dawidoff
Ernest Lawrence Thayer | Casey at the Bat
Will Hough & Frank Adams | The Umpire Is a Most Unhappy Man
Jack Norworth | Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Newspaper Verse | Franklin P. Adams: Baseball’s Sad Lexicon | George E. Phair: The Old-Fashioned Pitcher
Charles E. Van Loan | Baseball as the Bleachers Like It
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Introduction by Nicholas Dawidoff
Ernest Lawrence Thayer | Casey at the Bat
Will Hough & Frank Adams | The Umpire Is a Most Unhappy Man
Jack Norworth | Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Newspaper Verse | Franklin P. Adams: Baseball’s Sad Lexicon | George E. Phair: The Old-Fashioned Pitcher
Charles E. Van Loan | Baseball as the Bleachers Like It
Owen Johnson | from The Varmint
George Jean Nathan | Baiting the Umpire
Albert G. Spalding | from America’s National Game
Damon Runyon | Hail! Roger Merkle, Favorite of Toledo | Rajah’s Pride Falls Before ‘G. Hooks-em’
Lawrence S. Ritter | from The Glory of Their Times: Sam Crawford
Ring Lardner | from You Know Me Al | Where Do You Get That Noise?
Carl Sandburg | Hits and Runs | from Always the Young Strangers
Heywood Broun | Ruth Comes Into His Own with 2 Homers
Jerome Holtzman | from No Cheering in the Press Box: Richards Vidmer
William Carlos Williams | The crowd at the ball game | from White Mule: Fourth of July Doubleheader
Donald Honig | from Baseball When the Grass Was Real: James “Cool Papa” Bell
James Weldon Johnson | from Along This Way
Paul Gallico | Inside the Inside
Moe Berg | Pitchers and Catchers
James Thurber | You Could Look It Up
Rolfe Humphries | Polo Grounds
Wendell Smith | It Was a Great Day in Jersey
J. F. Powers | Jamesie
James A. Maxwell | Shine Ball
Nelson Algren | from Chicago: City on the Make
Jimmy Cannon | Nice Work
Tallulah Bankhead | from Tallulah
Bernard Malamud | from The Natural
Red Smith | Dodgers Defeat Yanks, 3-2, as Erskine Fans 14 | The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Grove
Jacques Barzun | from God’s Country and Mine
Robert Frost | Perfect Day-A Day of Prowess
James T. Farrell | My Grandmother Goes to Comiskey Park
George Abbott, Richard Bissell, & Douglass Wallop | from Damn Yankees
W. C. Heinz | The Rocky Road of Pistol Pete
Jim Brosnan | from The Long Season
Robert Francis | Pitcher | The Base Stealer
John Updike | Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
Satchel Paige | Rules for Staying Young
Bill Veeck | A Can of Beer, a Slice of Cake-and Thou, Eddie Gaedel
Murray Kempton | Back at the Polo Grounds
Jimmy Breslin | from Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?
Marianne Moore | Baseball and Writing
Gay Talese | The Silent Season of a Hero
Willie Morris | from North Toward Home
Philip Roth | from Portnoy’s Complaint
Jim Bouton | from Ball Four
Dave Frishberg | Van Lingle Mungo
May Swenson | Analysis of Baseball
Roger Kahn | from The Boys of Summer
Joel Oppenheimer | from The Wrong Season
Roger Angell | from The Summer Game | from Five Seasons | from Late Innings | from Season Ticket
Brendan C. Boyd & Fred C. Harris | from The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book
George Plimpton | Final Twist of the Drama
Pat Jordan | from A False Spring
Bernadette Mayer | Carlton Fisk Is My Ideal
Bartlett Giamatti | The Green Fields of the Mind
Jonathan Schwartz | A Day of Light and Shadows
Mark Harris | from It Looked Like For Ever
Eric Rolfe Greenberg | from The Celebrant
Amiri Baraka | from The Autobiography of Leroi Jones
Robert Creamer | from Stengel: His Life and Times
Roy Blount, Jr. | The Sporting News
David Remnick | The September Song of Mr. October
Annie Dillard | from An American Childhood
Stephen Jay Gould | The Streak of Streaks
Stephen King | Head Down
Molly O’Neill | Coming to the Plate, One Family’s Ethos
Richard Ford | A Minors Affair
Yusef Komunyakaa | Glory
Don DeLillo | from Underworld
Martin Espada | Rain Delay: Toledo Mud Hens, July 8, 1994
Keith Hernandez | from Pure Baseball
Buster Olney | Yankee Ends Real Corker of a Mystery
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