Sporting News Selects 50 Greatest Sluggers

Baseball is in the midst of an all out power hitting surge with more home runs being hit than ever before, and this new book by the Sporting News is perfectly timed to take advantage of our current facination with the long ball. This book is also one that the generations can enjoy together.. My son is always asking me,"who was better, Babe Ruth or Mark Mcwire?" Was Sammy Sosa better than Hank Aaron?" Well, the beauty of this book is that it places all the important sluggers throughout baseball history in context so that kids of all ages can read and argue their case. I particularily enjoyed the qoutes from each slugger's contemporaries about an aspect of their personna. The graphics are eye-catching and modern enough to grab the attention of today's visually sopisticated youth. This is particularly important in giving the old-time players a modern context and perception. The novelist, Bernard Malamud (The Natural) once wrote,"baseball history has the quality of mythology." This book brings that qoute to life full-force by linking these epic slugging heroes together in an historical weave that truly captures the larger-than-life feats and personalities of characters like; Babe Ruth, "the Sultan of Swat", Hammerin' Hank Aaron. "Double XX" Jimmy Foxx, and "Hondo" Frank Howard, considered by some to be the strongest man ever to wear a uniform. I loved sharing the book with my friends and children. It truly is a book for the ages.

I found this book very insightful and informative. In my opinion, every baseball fan should own this title since it profiles the careers of old greats such as Mickey Mantle all the way up to the present career of Big Mac. The book could use a little more information on each slugger but the cursory player review is understandable since it covers fifty sluggers. The book appeals to the American obsession with the long ball and caters to people's interests. The Sporting News should be commended for its top notch publication on the subject. Bottom Line: This book is a must for any real baseball fan.