Spring Training - Part 1 - Sports Book Review by Harvey Frommer

As one who was literally brought up with the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia (I still have a few volumes in my library), I have felt the lack of that tome in the spring just as baseball comes alive.

Thankfully, now there is "The 2006 ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia" with editors Gary Gillette and Pete Palmer (Sterling Publishing Company, 174 pages, $24.95 doing their splendid stuff. This epic effort is probably the most complete and baseball database ever put together. Essays, info, perspectives, annual team-by-team batting and pitching statistics for all players in major league history, all-time leaders in 150 categories, facts and factoids on teams and managers and more! As Casey Stengel used to say: "You could look it up."

A kind of companion guide to the above would be "Baseball Field Guide" by Dan Formosa and Paul Hamburger (Thunder's Mouth Press, $13.95, 224 pages). This a book to rummage thru, to keep in your pocket when you go to a game, to savor. It is as its sub-title suggests: "An in-depth illustrated field guide to the complete rules of baseball.
Jim Reisler's "A Great Day in Cooperstown" (Carroll and Graf, $26.00, 241 pages) focuses cleverly on a small slice of baseball history - the unusual origins of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Part bio, part detective story, part profiling of the original 11 Hall of Famers - the book is worth the money and your time.
"Crashing the Borders" by Harvey Araton (Free Press, $25.00, 207 pages) is a rather slim but highly interesting survey of the state of hoops. Sub-titled: "How Baseball Won the World and Lost Its Soul at Home," the book rails at the many flaws, false steps and fakers in the game today. Vet sports journalist Araton spares no one - worth reading.
"Only With Passion" by Katarina Witt with E.M. Swift (Public Affairs, $23.50, 168 pages) was a tie in to the fame of its subject and the Winter Olympics 2006. Witt watchers will benefit.

MOST NOTABLE "Our Red Sox" by Robert Sullivan (Emmis Books, $10.95, 186 pages, paper) is a delightful read for all fans of the team from the Hub. Personal, painful at times because of the memories, the book is one to savor like a good red wine. Sullivan's careful and graceful prose, a mix of intimate BoSox lore and family history, sets it apart from other books on the subject. As the co-author of "Red Sox Vs. Yankees" and the just published "Red Sox Where Have You Gone?" - -I can appreciate all the nuances of "Our Red Sox." It's also enough to convert one to root for the team from Fenway - -not quite.

Harvey Frommer is now in his 32nd consecutive year of writing sports books. He is the author of 38 sports books, including the classics: "New York City Baseball," "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," "Rickey and Robinson," "A Yankee Century," and Red Sox Vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry" (with Frederic J. Frommer). His newest efforts are OLD TIME BASEBALL and RED SOX WHERE HAVE YOU GONE?

Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.

FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in excess of 850,000 and appears on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.