Brooks on Books: Baseball Americana

To describe this book, I am going to use a word which could be considered rather unmanly in a context other than describing a "dame." Yes, folks, "Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library Congress" is...gorgeous.

This collection of photos, ephemera, and mementos from the collection of the Library of Congress is spectacular. It's large enough to show off the pictures but not so large it's unwieldy. It's printed on quality paper with attractive design. But most importantly, the content is just fantastic.

This book functions as a nice general history of the sport as well as a showcase for the collection. It's arranged chronologically, taking us from the murky beginnings of the game (and doing a good job of debunking some previously accepted myths and trying to straighten out some of the origins) up to the present, using the reproductions of various items to illustrate the narrative. There are sidebar sections on subtopics like women in baseball, wartime baseball, and baseball in early motion pictures.

Both novice and hardcore fans will find plenty of interest here. Even if you don't want to read the text, it's fun to just browse through the book and look at the stuff: vintage photos of major league action, old posters advertising games, baseball cards, lithographs, magazine cartoons, movie lobby cards, sheet music, comic book reproductions--look, I can describe this stuff, but you really just have to pick it up and look at it it to appreciate it.

I wish the book covered a little bit more of the seventies and eighties, as I collected a lot of memorabilia from that era as a kid and it interests me more than the 19th century, but that's about the only change I'd suggest. There are all sorts of things to enjoy here, including many surprises. And it's not just a celebration of major league baseball, but of the sport itself. One of my favorite illustrations is near the beginning of the book, a two-page spread consisting of several lads playing some variation of the game at 113th Street in Harlem in 1954. It looks like they're playing in some trash-strewn vacant lot between buildings, with tenements visible around them. On a brick side of the building, you see painted, next to a "NO DUMPING" notice, the words "Boy's Stadium." It captures that urban aspect of the game you might forget about unless you read a lot of Larry King--kids in the city just finding a place to play and doing it.

There is a lot of material in here to suggest the pastoral aspects of baseball, too, but don't worry, the text doesn't stray too far into the mythological, "Baseball is Heaven" stuff you see elsewhere. "Baseball Americana" is content telling the story of the game and presenting this wonderful memorabilia. It's an outstanding--and gorgeous--book.