Wherever I Wind Up
by R.A. Dickey (Blue Rider, $27)
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Damn Yankees
edited by Rob Fleder (Ecco, $28)
What more is there to say about the most storied franchise in baseball? said David L. Ulin in the Los Angeles Times. Judging from this “remarkable” essay collection, there’s plenty. Frank Deford’s piece doesn’t add much, only reaffirming his status as “America’s most overrated sportswriter.” But Leigh Montville entertains by imagining Babe Ruth as a contemporary player, and Nathaniel Rich establishes a useful theme by asking what, exactly, underlies Yankee fans’ insatiable need to win.
Calico Joe
by John Grisham (Doubleday, $25)
John Grisham’s new novel doesn’t even sniff a courtroom, said Chris Foran in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It opens with an invented moment set during the 1973 National League pennant race—the beaning of a promising Chicago Cubs rookie named Joe Castle. Grisham’s attempt to create a redemption tale from the long aftermath “is more bloop single than home run,” but fans of 1970s baseball “will find plenty of memory-lane material” to keep the pages turning.
Bill Veeck
by Paul Dickson (Walker & Co., $28)
“To be ignorant of Bill Veeck’s legacy to baseball is akin to being unaware of Steve Jobs’s role in computers,” said Mark Hodermarsky in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “A maverick and visionary,” Veeck owned four big-league teams across four decades, and his penchant for upsetting the status quo included using exploding scoreboards and signing Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League. This biography is “as close to a must-read as any baseball book in recent memory.”