Great Baseball Stories

Ruminations and Nostalgic Reminiscences on Our National Pastime

By: Andrew Blauner - editor, Lee Gutkind - editor, Yogi Berra - foreword

Narrated by: Keythe Farley

Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

Here is a wonderful collection of 20 revealing essays on the national pastime. Featuring contributions from Roger Angell, John Thorn, Frank Deford, George Plimpton, Stefan Fatsis, and others (plus a foreword by the legendary Yogi Berra), the stories are united by the authors’ fervent love of the game.

©2008, 2012 the Creative Nonfiction Foundation (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Great stories

This is a great compilation of baseball stories showing the personal side of the sport

Stunning

For anyone who grew up as a baby boomer there is simply a strong cultural bond with baseball. This book really captures that in florid prose. While I can’t say that baseball remains the national pastime, it certainly was that and more in post-World War II America.

Not for you if you are expecting MLB stories

I was expecting a number of articles like the one by Roger Angell and was surprised to find that most of the stories in this anthology are individual's memories of family, growing up, etc where baseball is a common theme for nostalgia. Stories focus on such things as a first baseball glove, playing catch with dad, going to the ball park with dad, etc. Writers were both male and female. When I discovered what the stories were about, I decided to stop reading after one more story, just one more, and just one more and I suddenly reached the end. What drew me in was the quality of the writing which was the editor's basis for choosing the stories included. Many were written by professional writers whom one may have encountered in another context and do not normally write about baseball. If baseball was part of your life growing up - as a fan, playing with family, playing Little League, etc. you will probably enjoy this book. If you are looking for stories about MLB, then maybe not so much.

Collection of baseball stories

It was fair…some of the stories easier to enjoy and relate to while others dragged a bit…fairly quick read but was also ready to move on to something else

Hard to keep interested

While the stories were somewhat enjoyable, the same cannot be said about the narrator. I listened to end, but found myself reaching for the pause button quite often, just to get a break from said narrator.

Great winter reading

It’s 9 degrees outside in NYC and listening to this book, it might as well 90 degrees in Yankees Stadium in July.
Thank you for this

I'd rather read the book

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The thing I would change about this book is the narrator.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

I couldn't focus on the book--after a couple of hours, all I could think of--is how I couldn't stand the reader.
He might be a good reader if someone wrote a book about aliens coming to earth, and the book was written from the aliens point of view.
His voice seems detached from the material. He reads all of the words, I'm sure, but by the time he gets done with them, the words don't mean anything.
If the narrator read a book about having great sex--by the time he got done with it, you wouldn't care about sex, you wouldn't like sex, and you wouldn't want anything to do with sex.
In this case, he does the same for baseball. Baseball was a great game--until he started reading about it.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

It would have to be a silent movie.

Any additional comments?

I would buy this book again if there was a different narrator. I'd take my chances. The material is too good. Great writers and great stories, but not a pleasurable listening experience.

How to love baseball

This book brought back so many memories of playing as a kid, watching Little League games, and MLB. A unique sport. Even the Finnish game

fun collection

very fun collection of different people's baseball stories. kept me entertained for hours. the narration was spot on.

Unnecessarily Vulgar and Profane

The inclusion of J.D. Scrimger's story was entirely inappropriate and unnecessary. It referenced detailed public exposure of a young boy in front of a large crowd, disturbing details in sexuality, and profanity. The inclusion of this "art" destroyed any semblance of this as a book worth ones time to hear it.