Written by Jon Williams
The weather is slowly getting warmer and the days are
growing longer. We’re just a few days away from the official start of
spring…and already more than a month into Major League Baseball’s spring
training. The World Baseball Classic, the sport’s answer to the Olympics, is in
full swing, with the U.S. team plays tonight with hopes of advancing to the third round. The
regular season begins on March 31 with a game between the Texas Rangers and the
Houston Astros, with everyone else opening on April 1 or 2.
Everything about baseball captivates our creative
imagination: the pace of the game, the larger-than life characters that play
it, the hot, hazy days and long, sultry nights in which it’s played, the smell
of grass and leather…I could go on. So it’s no surprise that the national
pastime has inspired some of our finest storytelling. It’s a game that
translates naturally to audiobook, with the narrator’s voice reminiscent of a
broadcaster relating the action of the game over the airwaves.
Here are a few baseball-related audiobooks to whet your
patrons’ appetites for Opening Day:
Selected
Shorts – Baseball: A fine place to start, this collection features eleven
pieces of short fiction about baseball from notable authors and fans of the
game.
Moneyball
by Michael Lewis and
The
Extra 2% by Jonah Keri: The Yankees became known as the “evil empire”
by being able to outspend other clubs for the services of the best available
players. Teams without New York’s revenue are forced to look at other means to
build their teams. Here are looks at two such teams—the Oakland Athletics (
Moneyball) and the Tampa Bay Rays (
The Extra 2%)—who found success despite
having payrolls a fraction the size of their competitors.
Ball
Four by Jim Bouton: Bouton, a pitcher with the Seattle Pilots and
Houston Astros at the time, kept a diary throughout the 1969 season.
Ball Four is the result, a book that
shined the light for the first time on what life was really like as a Major
League Baseball player. Controversial at the time, earning the ire of Bouton’s
peers, the book was named one of
Time
Magazine’s 100 Greatest Non-Fiction books in 2011.
Cardboard
Gods by Josh Wilker: Talk to any baseball fan of a certain age—I’m one
of them—and you’ll hear memories of a youth filled with collecting baseball
cards and trading with their friends. In
Cardboard
Gods, Josh Wilker entwines memoir with baseball history, explored through a
handful of cards from his formative years.
The
Great American Novel by Philip Roth: In 1943, the Port Ruppert Mundys
were the worst team in the Patriot League. What, you’ve never heard of the
Patriot League? That’s because, as a Communist organization, it has been
eradicated from the history books. That’s the premise of this hilarious novel
from Philip Roth, the recently retired author of other great American novels
like
Goodbye, Columbus and
American Pastoral.
Blockade
Billy by Stephen King: When the New Jersey Titans lose both of their
catchers, they call up Billy Blakely to fill in. It turns out Billy is a
phenomenal player who quickly captures the adulation of the fans…but Billy may
not be who he seems to be. It’s a baseball yarn with a twist that only Stephen
King could provide. King also has another novella tangentially related to
baseball,
A
Face in the Crowd, written in collaboration with Stewart O’Nan.
Shoeless
Joe by W.P. Kinsella: Baseball fans know the classic baseball movie
Field
of Dreams. This is the novel the movie was based on, in which an Iowa
farmer, inspired by a disembodied voice, plows under his cornfield to build a
baseball diamond for the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson and a few other notables
from the past.
What baseball tales are your favorites? Are there any that
are particularly popular with your patrons?