The Baseball Anthology: 125 Years of Stories, Poems, Articles, Photographs, Drawings, Interviews, Cartoons, and Other Memorabilia

The husband/father in this household is a baseball-lover of the first water, well-read and well-versed, who received this book as a peace-offering. Large and handsome, the book brought him discoveries: photographs not in general circulation and tales that made legends real.

I like to think of this book as a companion to the printed version of the Ken Burns Baseball documentary. While the Burns book may cite a reference, this book will contain the complete text. As a result the level of detail here is greater but less ground is covered. Likewise, there are less photographs here but they are rarier and more striking than most of the Burns photographs. For example I had never seen an "action" photograph of the great Christy Mathewson prior to reading this book (see p. 114). It is one thing to imagine that wicked curve being fired at you via prose, quite another to actually see the fire in his mid stride eyes bearing down on you via photograph. If I had to choose one, I prefer the Burns book but I think that every baseball fan will want to have both in their collection. What one lacks, the other fills in.