My favorite part about asking people for their list of ten essential baseball books was not learning that "Ball Four" or "Glory of Their Times" are so popular. We already knew that. What really turned me on were the titles I had never of like Man on Spikes, or the ones that I knew precious little about like The Celebrant and The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book. I was over at Jay Jaffe’s new crib in Brooklyn last Friday and he showed me his copy of the card book which looks like terrific fun.  Dig this:

"Earl Torgeson’s two favorite activities were fist-fighting and breaking his shoulder, both of which he did whenever he got the chance. On the back of this card it says, "Torgy likes a good practical joke" – which is the biog writer’s subtle way of suggesting that he enjoyed knocking people’s teeth out. He is probably also the only left-handed hitting first baseman over 6’2" who ever stole 20 bases in one season."

 Brendan C Boyd and Fred C. Harris.

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 More voting…(S-W)

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Last month I received an e-mail from Chris Illuminati, the content editor of Phillyburbs.com. He told me he was asking different people for one baseball book that they’d consider essential. I picked "No Cheering From the Press Box," Jerome Holtzman’s wonderful collection of interviews with old time sports writers, but sent Chris a list of ten essential books just for the fun of it. Shortly after the story ran I thought it’d be fun to ask a group of seamheads–historians, biographers, columnists, beat writers, screenwriters, novelists–for a list of their ten essential baseball books. Not the ten best books or even the ten most essential books just ten essential ones.

I deliberately rigged the question because there are more than just ten essential books in any self-respecting baseball libray. But I was more interested in lists that would reveal the quirks and personal tastes of each individual rather than trying to assemble an authoratative or comprehensive poll. 

The top vote getters are interesting–though not particularly surprising–and because the lists are so subjective there are no consensus selections. "Ball Four" and "The Glory of Their Times" and "The Bill James Historical Abstract" were the top picks, though some people distinctly went with the original Historical Abstract while others chose the new one.  Bill James got more votes than any individual writer followed by Roger Angell (the most common difficulty for the contributors seemed to be which Angell compilation to go with).

I heard back from 55 people via e-mail and even trooped to the far reaches of the upper east side to visit Ray Robinson and get his list (I also had some partial responses and decided not to include them). A total of 168 different books were selected.  Here are the results.  Tomorrow, I’ll post the individual ballots.

Table 1: Here are the top 15 (7 or more votes):

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