Day 2: 30 baseball books in 30 days of April
The book: Baseball's Greatest Quotations: An Illustrated Treasury of Baseball Quotations and Historical Lore
The author: Paul Dickson
How to find it: HarperCollins Publishers, 652 pages, $19.95
Where we'd go looking for it: Powell's books link here, or Dickson's personal website.
The scoop: It's a revised, paperback edition of a book Dickson put out in 1991, 2 1/2 pounds of quotes about the game that we'd recommend over others out there (for example, The Gigantic Book of Baseball Quotes edited by Wayne Stewart, 787 pages, $24.95, in 2007).
We're also quite fond of Dickson's Baseball Dictonary (1989, revised in '99, and being revised again) and pretty much every other anthology he's put together on the sport (seven in all)
Why need to update it?
"I'm not here to talk about the past," said Mark McGwire at the March 17, 2005 House committee hearings on steroids.
So, it's really like a history book that continues to reflect where the game has gone and where it's heading.
The Maryland-based Dickson notes that in between editions, he realized that there aren't as many quotes about baseball, or from baseball players, as he'd expect. Much of that is because there are more Latino and Japanese players who stick to their native languages, there's most hostility between the media and the players, and older broadcasters who used to be dedicated to radio word pictures are now on TV just putting captions on whatever pictures the director wants to put up.
From Estalla Aaron (Hank's mother) to "Sad" Sam Zoldak (a former Cleveland and St. Louis relief pitcher), Dickson has recorded the best examples of what the sport means to people, and what they've said about it.
Some other quotes that caught our eye:
=="Unless you understand what sport is all about and how important winning is to you, I don't think you understand the insult part of this thing." -- Joe Torre, after rejecting the incentive-based contract offered by the New York Yankees after the 2007 season.
=="Today, I told my little girl I'm going to the ballpark, and she asked, 'What for?'" -- Dave Anderson, former Dodgers reserve infielder, in June 1987 (from Sports Illustrated).
There are 24 pages devoted to quotes from Casey Stengel, seven pages each to Babe Ruth, Dizzy Dean and Yogi Berra, four to Red Barber. Seven pages contain baseball jokes.
Vin Scully and "Shakespeare on Baseball" are separated by two pages.
Yet one quote attributed to Scully says it was from a "Boston Globe obituary for Scully, November 25, 2003."
When Scully was told of this recently, he said: "Wasn't it Mark Twain who said the reports of my demise were premature?"
There's another quote for you.
How it does down in the scorebook: A three-run homer up into the net at Fenway Park's Green Monster.