Book Review: The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
A couple of weeks ago, when I was in Barnes & Noble trying to kill some time before seeing Knocked Up at the theatre across the street, I came across a table with baseball books displayed across it. I figured I’d read half of them, and the other half were about either the Yankees or Red Sox (or both), so I wasn’t as drawn to the display as I normally would have been. Just as I was walking away, though, one book caught my eye. It was “The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball“, written by Derek Zumsteg of U.S.S. Mariner, Baseball Prospectus, and numerous other outlets. I’ve always enjoyed what he’s had to write, and recalled reading some excerpts he posted that got left on the editing room floor.
I made my way to the movie, book in hand. I arrived in my seat a good half an hour before the show, and cracked open my new purchase. The first thing that struck me about the book was the writing style. It was conversational, broad but not vague, and just damn pleasurable to read. It would be easy to try and be too witty or come off as condescending with a topic like cheating in baseball, but it was neither. It was funny, honest, and just plain fun to read. As the lights dimmed for the movie to begin, I was actually disappointed that I’d have to put off reading more for two hours.
In the book, Zumsteg touches on obvious topics like the spitball and corking your bat, but also offers insight into the cheating that grounds crews do for the home team, the chess-like tactics behind rain delays, and just how Gaylord Perry never got caught with a veritable arsenal of ball-doping concoctions. His chapter on the Black Sox scandal was especially excellent, with charts to help keep track of the multiple layers of scheming going on, and a perfect balance of bare-bones facts and narrative.
I’ve already recommended the book to several of my friends — including those that aren’t really interested in baseball. It’s such an entertaining read that even marginal fans will really enjoy it. I’ve given it some thought, and I think that it’s probably the best general baseball book that I’ve read in years. I highly recommend picking up a copy.
July 17th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
[…] 5th, 2007 · No Comments ** A review of The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball appears on The Pastimeblog. […]
July 29th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
[…] The grounds crew had trouble getting the tarp on… which is sure a weird coincidence, because the home team was down 3-0 before the game would have been official, meaning that if the field wasn’t in good shape — like, for instance, if the tarp wasn’t put on quickly enough — the game would be called. There’s a whole chapter about these kind of shenanigans in Derek Zumsteg’s great book, “The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball“. […]
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
[…] Filling a hole in the history of the game, Level Playing Fields is a book I’d recommend to anyone looking to expand their knowledge of just how and why a ball field looks as it does. In Derek Zumsteg’s book The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball, he mentions many of the ways that groundskeepers affected how the game is played, and wishes that there were a definitive history of the early days of groundskeeping. This is that book. […]