How many of these outstanding baseball books have you read?

The major league baseball season is just a couple of weeks old, and I saw in the Los Angeles Times recently that book critic David L. Ulin had revisited his list of favorite baseball books.

Back in 2006, right before the start of the pro baseball season, Ulin compiled a list of his nine favorite baseball books, that is, one book for each inning in the game or for each player on the team.

The list is maybe most notable for the famous baseball books that didn’t make the list – “The Boys of Summer” by Roger Kahn, “Ball Four” by Jim Bouton, “A Day in the Bleachers” by Arnold Hano, “Veeck – As In Wreck” by Bill Veeck, “The Unforgettable Season” by G.H. Fleming, “Game of Shadows” by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.

Books that were on his list, included the following titles:
1. “You Know Me, Al” by Ring Lardner
2. “The Natural” by Bernard Malamud
3. “The Long Season” by Jim Brosnan
4. “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” by Jimmy Breslin
5. “The Glory of Their Times” by Lawrence S. Ritters
6. “The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.” by Robert Coover
7. “Five Seasons” by Roger Angell
8. “The Celebrant” by Eric Rolfe Greenberg
9. “Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy” by Jules Tygiel

While we’re on the subject of baseball books, I also saw where “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron” by Howard Bryant had been named the winner of this year’s Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Casey Award, it has been given annually since 1983 to the best baseball book of the year by the editors of “Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine.”

Other finalists for this year’s award included the following books:

- "The Amazing Tale of Mr. Herbert and His Fabulous Alpine Cowboys Baseball Club: An Illustrated History of the Best Little Semipro Baseball Team in Texas" by DJ Stout
- "Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards" by Josh Wilker
- "The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad" by Robert Elias
- "Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball & the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had" by Edward Achorn
- "The Immortals: An Art Collection of Baseball's Best" by Dick Perez, text by William C. Kashatus
- "The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood" by Jane Leavy
- "Pie Traynor: A Baseball Biography" by James Forr and David Proctor
- "Target Field: The New Home of the Minnesota Twins" by Steve Berg
- "Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend" by James S. Hirsch

What follows is a complete list of the all-time winners of the Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year:

1983 – “The Celebrant” by Eric Rolfe Greenberg
1984 – “Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers” by Peter Golenbock
1985 – “Good Enough to Dream” by Roger Kahn
1986 – “The Bill James Historical Abstract” by Bill James
1987 – “Diamonds Are Forever” by Peter H. Gordon
1988 – “Blackball Stars” by John Holway
1989 – “The Pitch That Killed” by Mike Sowell
1990 – “Baseball: The People’s Game” by Harold Seymour
1991 – “To Everything a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia, 1909-1976" by Bruce Kuklick
1992 – “The Negro Baseball Leagues” by Phil Dixon
1993 – “Diamonds” by Michael Gershman
1994 – “Lords of the Realm” by John Helyar
1995 – “Walter Johnson” by Henry W. Thomas
1996 – “Slide, Kelly, Slide” by Marty Appel
1997 – “Play for a Kingdom” by Thomas Dyja
1998 – “Judge and Jury” by David Pietrusza
1999 – “Slouching Toward Fargo” by Neal Karlen
2000 – “Cy Young” by Reed Browning
2001 – “The Final Season” by Tom Stanton
2002 – “Shut Out” by Howard Bryant
2003 – “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis
2004 – “Ted Williams” by Leigh Montville
2005 – “Luckiest Man” by Jonathan Eig
2006 – “Game of Inches” by Peter Morris
2007 – “The Soul of Baseball” by Joe Posnanski
2008 – "We are the Ship" by Kadir Nelson
2009 – "Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend" by Larry Tyre
2010 – "The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron" by Howard Bryant

In the end, how many of the books mentioned above have you had a chance to read? What did you think about them? Which did you like or dislike? Which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.