Dr. Harold Seymour

The Best Baseball Books Win the Seymour Medal

Or Place Among the Finalists In Annual Competition

Have you read them all? If not, our reviews will help you decide which one to get next.

Winners and Finalists for the years 1996-2004:

1996 Winner:

David Zang, Fleet Walker's Divided Heart. University of Nebraska Press. Life of baseball's first black major-leaguer also interested in the race question

Professor Zang teaches in the Department of Kinesiology at Towson University and has published books and articles on sport history. He has taught sports studies and American studies at three universities, and he serves on the publications board of the North American Society for Sport History. Read a review by John Brattain.

1996 Finalists:

Charles Alexander, Rogers Hornsby: A Biography. Here's the real Hornsby, written by the author of other baseball biographies. Henry Holt and Co. Read a review by Thomas Bourke.

David Falkner, Great Time Coming: The Life of Jackie Robinson from Baseball to Birmingham. Simon & Schuster. The author of other baseball books and biographies gives us the life and times of the breakthrough player. This book is out of print, so the publisher is unable to send us a review copy.

William Humber, Diamonds of the North: A Concise History of Baseball in Canada. Oxford University Press. The story of Canadian baseball written by a Canadian professor who has brought us other good baseball books. Although the book is out of print, the author, who lives in Toronto and teaches at Seneca College, has copies available.

David Nemec, The Beer and Whisky League: An Illustrated History of the American Association-Baseball's Renegade Major League. Nemec, a baseball historian and active SABR member, has published several other baseball books. Lyons Press. Read a review by John Brattain.

Henry W. Thomas, Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train. Phenom Press and University of Nebraska Press. A detailed biography by this famous pitcher's grandson. Read a review by David Shiner.

1997 Winner:

Arthur D. Hittner, Honus Wagner, The Life of Baseball's "Flying Dutchman" McFarland

Biography of a superstar and his remarkable career as a batter and shortstop with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Arthur Hittner, a Massachusetts attorney with a Harvard J.D., was a good-field, no-hit second baseman and shortstop. Now part of his law practice, stemming from his personal involvement with minor-league clubs, is in providing legal representation to buyers of such clubs. He has organized a national seminar on minor-league franchise investment, and he collects baseball-related fine art. Read a review by G.S. Rowe

1997 Finalists:

Marty Appel, Slide, Kelly, Slide: The Wild Life and Times of Mike"King" Kelly, Baseball's First Superstar. Scarecrow Press. Personality and achievements of one of baseball's lusty characters. Read a review by Leslie Heaphy.

Dennis DeValeria and Jeanne Burke DeValeria, Honus Wagner: A Biography. University of Pittsburgh Press. One of the five original inductees into the Cooperstown Hall of Fame gets a full-length biography by two writers who live and work in Pittsburgh. Read a review by G.S. Rowe.

Carl E. Prince, Brooklyn's Dodgers: The Bums, The Borough, and the Best of Baseball for 1947-1957. Oxford University Press. Stirring analysis of the intensity of the team's relationship to the community by a professor of history at New York University. Read a review by Laura Haywood.

G. Edward White, Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself 1903-1953. Princeton University Press. Progression of baseball from a marginal sport into a national pastime, written by a professor of law and history at the University of Virginia. Read a review by Stephen Hardy.

1998 Winner:

Patrick Harrigan, The Detroit Tigers: Club and Community, 1945-95. University of Toronto Press. Shows how the club evolved as an integral part of the city

Professor Harrigan teaches history at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, but he is a native Detroiter and long-time Tiger fan. He earned his doctorate at the University of Michigan. Read a review by Steve Klein.

1998 Finalists:

Greg Rhodes and John Erardi, Big Red Dynasty. Road West Publishing. All about the Cincinnati Machine and its accomplishments. Read a review by Harry A. Jebsen.

Alan M. Klein, Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. Princeton University Press. Unique experience of a two-nation team, written by a cultural anthropologist and sociology professor. Read a review by Robert Obojski.

Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Knopf. By a professor who has also written books on Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. Read a review by Michael E. Lomax.

Lyle Spatz, New York Yankee Openers. McFarland. The author has won other awards for his work. Read a review by Thomas Bourke.

1999 Winner:

Bruce Markusen, Baseball's Last Dynasty: Charlie Finley's Oakland A's. Masters Press/Contemporary Books. Focuses on the emergence of a championship club despite its internal turmoil

Bruce is Senior Researcher at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, New York. He has contributed articles to several national sports publications. Read a review by Thomas Bourke. The book has been expanded and reprinted by St. Johann Press under the title A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley's Swingin' A's.

1999 Finalists:

Leonard Koppett, Koppett's Concise History of Major League Baseball. Temple University Press. Written by a well-known journalist and author of other books on baseball.

David Pietrusza, Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The striking career of a unique personality. Diamond Communications.Read a review by G.S. Rowe.

William J. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870. McFarland. Shows how the professional sport evolved from a game practiced by a few amateur clubs to a pro sport played all over the Northeast. Read a review by Robert Obojski.

David Stevens, Baseball's Radical for All Seasons: A Biography of John Montgomery Ward. Scarecrow Press. Accomplishments of this influential players' rights champion as well as star player, written by a teacher/social worker. Read a review by David Jones. For a comparison of this biography with another on the same subject, read another review, this one by G.S. Rowe.

David Q. Voigt, The League that Failed. Scarecrow Press. Historical origins and seedy business practices in the late 19th and early 20th century. Read a review by Steven W. Pope.

2000 Winner:

Bill Marshall, Baseball's Pivotal Era, 1945-1951. University of Kentucky Press. Focuses on the events and colorful characters of the transformative postwar era

Bill's expertise lies in the fields of baseball history, oral history, and military history. At the University of Kentucky, where he is an archivist, librarian, and historian, his main title is Director of Special Collections and Archives. He holds a Master's Degree in Library Science. Read a review by Leslie Heaphy.

2000 Honorable Mention:

R.G. "Hank" Utley and Scott Verner, The Independent Carolina Baseball League, 1936-1938: Baseball Outlaws. McFarland. Declared "outlaw," this league of Carolina textile towns attracted excellent professionals and persevered through three tumultuous seasons. Read a review by Robert Obojski.

2000 Finalists:

Bruce Adelson, Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor League Baseball in the American South. Story of a little-known aspect of the civil rights movement, written by the author of other books on sports and on historical figures. University Press of Virginia. Read a review by Morris Eckhouse.

J. Thomas Hetrick, Chris Von der Ahe and the Saint Louis Browns. Scarecrow Press. Disputes, disasters, and legal battles characterized the career and the unique style of leadership of Von der Ahe. Read a review by Marc Onigman.

Bryan DiSalvatore, A Clever Base-Ballist: The Life and Times of John Montgomery Ward. Original publisher Pantheon Books, now Johns Hopkins University Press. Biography of the pitcher-labor leader and his era. Read a review by David Jones. For a comparison of this biography with one on the same subject, read another review, this one by G.S. Rowe.

Roberto Gonzales-Echevarria, The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball. Oxford University Press. Detailed chronicle of the history of baseball in Cuba, written by a professor of literature at Yale and former semipro catcher who was raised in Cuba. Read a review by Samuel O. Regalado.

Mark Rucker and Peter Bjarkman, Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball. Total Sports Publishing. Bjarkman, author of several books, is an expert on Caribbean baseball, and Rucker provides dazzling graphics. Read a review by Joseph Arbena.

2001 Winner:

Jules Tygiel, Past Time: Baseball as History. Oxford University Press. A collection of essays exploring baseball's role in American cultural and social history.

Professor Tygiel taught history at San Francisco State University and published several books, including Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award. Originally from Brooklyn, Jules was a fan first of the Dodgers and then the Mets. Read a review by G.S. Rowe.

2001 Runner-up:

Reed Browning, Cy Young: A Baseball Life. University of Massachusetts Press. Biography of the famous pitcher by a professor of history at Kenyon College. Read a review by Richard O. Davies.

2001 Other Finalists:

David W. Anderson, More than Merkle: A History of the Best and Most Exciting Baseball Season in Human History. University of Nebraska Press. Comprehensive story of a remarkable series of events in 1908, written by a telecommunications consultant who is also an umpire. Read a review by David Shiner.

Richard Ben Cramer, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life. Simon & Schuster. Prize-winning journalist portrays the flawed hero. Read a review by David Jones. Now read another review of this book, written by the author of this web site, Dorothy Jane Mills. It appeared in the International Journal of the History of Sport, Volume 19 Number 4 (December 2002), a Frank Cass Journal, on pages 213-216. The review was written at the request of the editor, Professor Scott A.G.M. Crawford of Eastern Ilinois University, and appears here with the permission of the Journal.

Jim Kaplan, Lefty Grove: American Original. A writer presents a popular star in this biography. SABR. Read a review by David L. Porter.

Wendy Knickerbocker, Sunday at the Ballpark: Billy Sunday's Professional Baseball Career, 1883-1890. Scarecrow Press. Saga of the evangelist and base-stealing ballplayer, written by a museum librarian who also grew up playing baseball. Read a review by John Holway.

Gabriel Schechter, Victory Faust: The Rube Who Saved McGraw's Giants. Charles April Publications. Optioned by Disney to become a movie about this awkward but amazing character who really helped the team win. Read a review by Christopher Jennison.

Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson. Red Sox Century: One Hundred Years of Red Sox Baseball. Stout helps edit the annual collections of pieces considered the best in American sports writing, and Johnson has co-authored and co-edited several baseball books. Houghton Mifflin. Read a review by Marc Onigman.

2002 Winner:

Tom Melville, Early Baseball and the Rise of the National League. McFarland & Company. An original assessment of the forces that developed early baseball into an organized national sport. Read a review by David Jones

2002 Finalists:

Robert F. Burk, Much More than a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball Since 1921. University of North Carolina Press. Account of the paternalistic era by an Ohio professor. Read a review by Leverett T. Smith.

James F. Giglio, Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man. University of Missouri Press. Read a review by Leverett T. Smith.

Martin Donell Kohout, Hal Chase: The Defiant Life and Turbulent Times of Baseball's Biggest Crook. McFarland & Company. Biography of a controversial character, a superb player but one strongly suspected of dishonesty. Read a review by Richard C. Crepeau.

2003 Winner:

Charles C. Alexander, Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era. Columbia University Press. During the Dark Thirties, baseball brightened the days for participants as well as spectators. Read a review by Joel Franks.

2003 Runner-Up:

Charles P. Korr, The End of Baseball as We Knew It: The Players Union, 1960-81. University of Illinois Press. With thorough research, Korr reveals the relationship of this important union with major-league baseball. Read a review by Ronald Cox.

2003 Finalists:

Howard Bryant, Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston. Routledge. Describes the institutionalized racism of the Boston Red Sox. Read a review by Michael E. Lomax.

Jon David Cash, Before They Were Cardinals: Major League Baseball in Nineteenth Century. St. Louis. University of Missouri Press. Early major-league baseball in St. Louis when it was part of the American Association. Read a review by David Jones.

David L. Fleitz, Louis Sockalexis: The First Cleveland Indian. McFarland. Biography of the first man of his race to play in the majors. Read a review by Harry Jebsen.

Leslie A. Heaphy, The Negro Leagues 1869-1960. McFarland. Covers the famous leagues, clubs, and players. Read a review by Richard A. Swanson.

Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy. Harper Collins. Biography of the legendary pitcher who was reluctant to be famous. Read a review by Jody Davenport.

Joseph A. Reaves, Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia. University of Nebraska Press. Presents the Chinese experience with baseball as well as the Japanese. Read a review by George Grella.

2004 Winner:

Peter Morris, Baseball Fever: Early Baseball in Michigan. University of Michigan Press. Recounts the astonishing development of baseball in Michigan from the mid-1850s through the mid-1870s.

2004 Finalists:

Reed Browning, 1924: Baseball's Greatest Season. University of Massachusetts Press. Read a review by Jeff Sackmann.

James E. Elfers, The Tour to End All Tours: The Story of Major League Baseball's 1913-1914 World Tour. University of Nebraska Press. Read a review by Ron Briley.

Daniel Nathan, Saying It's So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal. University of Illinois Press.

Brad Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators. Contemporary Press/McGraw Hill.

Lists of winners and finalists for the years after 2004 are available on the Seymour Medal page of SABR's web site, http://SABR.org.