Summer, thankfully, approaches. (How do I know? We're all bitching about Tosca's pitching changes.) And with summer comes summer vacations and summer reading lists - for many, their time to reacquaint themselves with the printed word.

I recently had a request from a reader for a list of books that were "must reads" for someone who is just emerging into baseball fanaticism. I stumbled through a couple of selections, but wasn't satisfied with what I could come up with on short notice. So I sat down and thought about it, and pared the list to five essentials. If possible, I'd like the other readers to add their own selections. Remember, this list isn't for experts, and not for complete neophytes, but for the fan who is starting to become seriously absorbed in the game.


1 - The Thinking Fan's Guide To Baseball, Leonard Koppett. (Revised and Updated Edition)

This is the one I was trying to name the other night, and I kept stumbling over the title for some reason. A work of genius, full of airy perception, it represents the whole taught in a dry, penetrating style by a master observer of the game. The recently deceased Koppett was a genius with the typewriter and can compress volumes of knowledge into a few paragraphs. Read it slowly and carefully, think about each chapter (there are 33, each on a different defined topic) and you will be able to talk about the game like an expert by the end of the week.

2 - Weaver on Strategy, Earl Weaver with Terry Pluto

Revered as a master strategist and tactician, Earl Weaver gives a master class on in-game management in Weaver on Stretegy. Strictly speaking, the book is as much about tactics as strategy, and is all the better for it; it's a very easy read, punctuated with anecdotes from Weaver's pennant-winning Orioles teams.

3 - Nine Innings, Dan Okrent

I don't know what it's like to play major league baseball. If I had to guess, though, I'd say the experience is much like the one related in Nine Innings, the account of a single game between the Brewers (a team on which Okrent was the acknowleged expert) and the Orioles in June of 1982. It's certainly the most intimate and nuanced book of these five, the one best suited to summer reading, and will probably be the one to stick with you the longest.

4 - The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James

This is a big book, and a very useful book, because there is no other book that can give you the true flavour of the whole history of big-league baseball. The old version is just as good, really - I encourage you not to read this book for the statistical content (the win shares and so forth) but rather to gain an appreciation and feel for the history of the game, and not incidentally where the modern game and players "fit in".

5 - Total Baseball, Pete Palmer and John Thorn.

My edition is the 6th; I think we're up to the 8th now. This is not a book for taking to the beach - it's massive, weighed down with thousands of pages of statistics. But you shouldn't read this book for the numbers (though it is a valuable reference). The essays that make up much of the first few hundred pages are both a tremendous resource and a very good read, and well worth going through. This is baseball's encyclopedia in more ways than one. This is more of a "survey" than anything, because of its encyclopedic nature; but any fan can open to any essay and probably learn something. Not necessarily for reading cover-to-cover; but a very valuable book all the same.

I haven't included the very best baseball books in this list (including Only The Ball Was White, I Was Right On Time, You Gotta Have Wa, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and The Glory of Their Times, which is not just one of the greatest baseball books ever published, but one of the great books ever published) because they don't really fit the scope, or my count of five. But if I were picking a summer reading list for everyone, they would all be on there.

So, any other selections, either summer baseball reading in general or "Advanced Baseball 400" in particular?