The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated

Are you an umpire or player with an interest in the rules and how they came to be ? Then this is an indispensible and fascinating book. It's a good book to have, especially if you are serious about umpiring. Knowing the history of a particular rule will help you apply the rule on the field because you'll know why it came to be. From juggling fly balls (that's why the runner can go on first touch) to the infield fly rule, this book explains the origin of each rule in the book.

This book gives the reasons why there are 39,337 words in the rules to Major League Baseball. Do you want to know why the pitchers' mound is 60' 6"? Read the book. It covers most of the rules and how they developed through the years. If you love baseball and want to know all about it, this is a must read. If you like baseball, you may want to borrow the book from the library. The book does have some great b/w pictures.

Nice job of interweaving baseball's rules with anecdotes giving you the reasons they were first implemented or else later modified. I found it a surprise that this book was first written in 1994 and then updated for 1999 with almost no effort at all. Because there have been no important changes at all in the rules for a number of years now! Think about that. Monumental player strikes, massive umpiring problems, records toppling almost every day--but the basic game has remained changeless. This book, as a result, may hold up for a long while as the best I've seen on the rules and their history.

Terrible title, but the book more than survives it. The Rules of Baseball a fun read? Somehow Nemec makes it happen. Just wish it had been longer. You get the feeling that for every anecdote he used he had another 10 or 12 he could have given us that were just about as entertaining.

Apart from the fact that the author seems to pick and choose which rule changes to explore, I have nothing but praise and admiration for this book. The tumultuous origins of many basic rules that we now take for granted and assume have always been an integral part of baseball are where the author is at his very best.