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Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies, and Everything Else
The latest and greatest in ESPN.com baseball guru Rob Neyer's
Big Book series, Legends is a highly entertaining guide to baseball fables that
have been handed down through generations.
The well-told baseball story has long been a staple for baseball fans. In Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends , Neyer breathes new life into both classic and obscure stories throughout twentieth-century baseball -- stories that, while engaging on their own, also tell us fascinating things about their main characters and about the sport's incredibly rich history. With his signature style, Rob gets to the heart of every anecdote, working through the particulars with careful research drawn from a variety of primary sources. For each story, he Did this really happen? Did it happen, sort of? Or was the story simply the wild invention of someone's imagination? Among the scores of legends Neyer questions and investigates...
Rob checks each story, separates the truths from the myths, and places their fascinating characters into the larger historical context. Filled with insider lore and Neyer's sharp wit and insights, this is an exciting addition to a superb series and an essential read for true fans of our national pastime.
Big Book series, Legends is a highly entertaining guide to baseball fables that
have been handed down through generations.
The well-told baseball story has long been a staple for baseball fans. In Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends , Neyer breathes new life into both classic and obscure stories throughout twentieth-century baseball -- stories that, while engaging on their own, also tell us fascinating things about their main characters and about the sport's incredibly rich history. With his signature style, Rob gets to the heart of every anecdote, working through the particulars with careful research drawn from a variety of primary sources. For each story, he Did this really happen? Did it happen, sort of? Or was the story simply the wild invention of someone's imagination? Among the scores of legends Neyer questions and investigates...
Rob checks each story, separates the truths from the myths, and places their fascinating characters into the larger historical context. Filled with insider lore and Neyer's sharp wit and insights, this is an exciting addition to a superb series and an essential read for true fans of our national pastime.
352 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2008
12 people are currently reading
129 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
April 1, 2019
In this book I learned a lot of facts about baseball. The most intersting one I found was that the disease ALS also called Lou Gehrigs disease was named after the famous baseball player Lou Gehrig. He was Forced to retire at age 31 because of this disease.
August 6, 2008
In this book, Rob Neyer factchecks some of the many stories that have been told about baseball over the years. I personally love reading Rob Neyer's work, though one may need a certain level of baseball OCD to enjoy something like this. The bulk of the writing is going through boxscores and game accounts.
If you are a huge baseball dork, you'll like it, otherwise you'll be bored to tears (I liked it!).
If you are a huge baseball dork, you'll like it, otherwise you'll be bored to tears (I liked it!).
July 8, 2017
I've been reading this book casually since December whenever I wanted to take a break from something heavier. It's a series of 2-3 page recollections from ballplayers followed by Rob Neyer's research to check their veracity. As you can imagine ballplayers tend to remember the drama they were feeling and mistaking that for drama that never really took place on the ball field. I read a lot about baseball and many of the stories were new to me although there a few famous ones too. Neyer had to put a lot of time into the research portion, digging through box scores and newspaper accounts, sometimes on microfiche.
I thought his debunking of the Giants stealing signs to win the pennant in 1954 was a particularly good effort. This was a story I knew and believed. While the Giants may have been stealing some signs the team's actual statistical improvement after they allegedly started doing it was negligible. After a while the surprise of the book was the occasional story where a ballplayer remembers something 90% correct. But whether the stories were true or not some of them are funny and many are insightful into the ways ballplayers see the game on the field.
I made the mistake of purchasing the Kindle version of this one. The book has a bunch of inserts of tangential stories on the same people spoken of in the main story. Instead of putting the tangential stories at the end of the main story the Kindle version breaks into the middle of the main one. Every chapter is a cumbersome jump ahead to finish the first one and then jump back to finish the tangent. This is probably the main reason I didn't read the book in a short period of time. It would be much easier to read a printed version.
I thought his debunking of the Giants stealing signs to win the pennant in 1954 was a particularly good effort. This was a story I knew and believed. While the Giants may have been stealing some signs the team's actual statistical improvement after they allegedly started doing it was negligible. After a while the surprise of the book was the occasional story where a ballplayer remembers something 90% correct. But whether the stories were true or not some of them are funny and many are insightful into the ways ballplayers see the game on the field.
I made the mistake of purchasing the Kindle version of this one. The book has a bunch of inserts of tangential stories on the same people spoken of in the main story. Instead of putting the tangential stories at the end of the main story the Kindle version breaks into the middle of the main one. Every chapter is a cumbersome jump ahead to finish the first one and then jump back to finish the tangent. This is probably the main reason I didn't read the book in a short period of time. It would be much easier to read a printed version.
March 9, 2021
A veteran sportswriter does a deep dive into the authenticity of compelling on- and off-the-field stories told by past players, coaches, and others involved in Major League Baseball. Lots of stats and fact checking, but quite interesting at times. The book covers everything from Babe Ruth’s infamous called home run and player/coach/team conflicts to hard drinkers, brawlers, and pitchers with a penchant for hitting batters.
Judging by the author’s revelations, those involved in America’s favorite pastime are either a bunch of liars or suffering from severe dementia—most of the stories are highly inflated or outright fabrications. Nevertheless, perhaps these yarns helped build the game’s legendary status.
My chief criticism of this work is that most of the stories take place in the 1970s or prior. Having grown up in the ’80s, I was hoping for a little more modern era coverage.
Judging by the author’s revelations, those involved in America’s favorite pastime are either a bunch of liars or suffering from severe dementia—most of the stories are highly inflated or outright fabrications. Nevertheless, perhaps these yarns helped build the game’s legendary status.
My chief criticism of this work is that most of the stories take place in the 1970s or prior. Having grown up in the ’80s, I was hoping for a little more modern era coverage.
May 9, 2021
It's generally a good rule of thumb that in telling history, it's better to stick to the facts. Sometimes, though, a good story can stand an embellishment or two. Rob Neyer, in his quest to sort his way through player accounts of events to sift the facts from the apochrypha, seems like he has struck upon a good idea for the first 50 pages or so of this book, but at that point, you have more than gotten the point, good and hard. This is a book that is built for toilet reading, when all is said and done.
April 8, 2020
Neyer is one of, if not my favorite baseball writers. Therefore, I enjoy almost everything he writes. I feel like he is the perfect blend of modern stat-head and old school baseball is beautiful. That said, I didn't enjoy this as much as his past books. As interesting as the premise is, it does get a little repetitive after a while. Its still a great read and one this is for certain, ballplayers never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
December 10, 2018
Written before he went nuts.
January 7, 2022
Rob looks into the often repeated baseball stories to see which ones are true or not. Very entertaining.
October 6, 2024
3.5
Least favorite of Neyer's work. Too many stories, many of them not interesting. Repetitive in a sense.
Least favorite of Neyer's work. Too many stories, many of them not interesting. Repetitive in a sense.
August 15, 2014
This book could be entitled "Everything You Wanted To Know About Baseball But Were Afraid To Ask."
It covers baseball legends from nearly the inception of baseball as we now know it. I'm surprised, but really shouldn't be, at how many myths there are floating around out there. It seems that baseball players, especially those of great fame, are also great story tellers.
This author makes it clear that we loves the stories about these guys, regardless of who started them, because myth is often much more interesting than real life.
Do you know the story of Babe Ruth supposedly pointing to where, after two strikes, he was going to hit a home run? Well, there's evidence that it only looked like he was pointing in that direction, and evidence that he was merely stating that there are lonely to strikes and he has one more to go. Well, on the next swing he hit the ball out of the park, and a legend began. The Bambino never corrected the myth; he enjoyed it too much, himself, to ruin it with the truth.
And so, Bob Neyer reveals myth after myth in his book. Of course, some of the legends are true.
Read it for yourself and you'll see!
A very enjoyable book for all who love baseball.
It covers baseball legends from nearly the inception of baseball as we now know it. I'm surprised, but really shouldn't be, at how many myths there are floating around out there. It seems that baseball players, especially those of great fame, are also great story tellers.
This author makes it clear that we loves the stories about these guys, regardless of who started them, because myth is often much more interesting than real life.
Do you know the story of Babe Ruth supposedly pointing to where, after two strikes, he was going to hit a home run? Well, there's evidence that it only looked like he was pointing in that direction, and evidence that he was merely stating that there are lonely to strikes and he has one more to go. Well, on the next swing he hit the ball out of the park, and a legend began. The Bambino never corrected the myth; he enjoyed it too much, himself, to ruin it with the truth.
And so, Bob Neyer reveals myth after myth in his book. Of course, some of the legends are true.
Read it for yourself and you'll see!
A very enjoyable book for all who love baseball.
June 26, 2009
Eh, this book was pretty good but I expected it to be better. Not really sure why I expected more, because all the Neyer books I've read have disappointed somewhat. (Though I keep reading because I've been an avid reader of his blog on ESPN for ten years).
Anyways, there's some great baseball stories in here (which is why I give it 3 stars) and Neyer tediously fact checks them. Did it happen or not? Most of the time, it didn't happen the way the storyteller told it. The essence of the story was right but the details were screwed up. Occasionally, it didn't happen at all. Near complete fabrication. That's interesting enough for a technical minded fellow like myself, but it isn't for everybody. The parts that really drag this down are his descriptions of looking at year-by-year, game-by-game. Just get to the point already...could you find evidence or not? In fact, I like Bill James' forward probably more than the meat of the book, which basically says that Neyer is sucking the fun out of the game by doing this. And that's probably true, but I'd have to look it up to be sure.
Anyways, there's some great baseball stories in here (which is why I give it 3 stars) and Neyer tediously fact checks them. Did it happen or not? Most of the time, it didn't happen the way the storyteller told it. The essence of the story was right but the details were screwed up. Occasionally, it didn't happen at all. Near complete fabrication. That's interesting enough for a technical minded fellow like myself, but it isn't for everybody. The parts that really drag this down are his descriptions of looking at year-by-year, game-by-game. Just get to the point already...could you find evidence or not? In fact, I like Bill James' forward probably more than the meat of the book, which basically says that Neyer is sucking the fun out of the game by doing this. And that's probably true, but I'd have to look it up to be sure.
April 5, 2010
The title of this book is a little deceiving -- what Neyer takes on here aren't really "legends" for the most part, just the sort of yarns and tall tales that old ballplayers are famous (infamous?) for. And he sometimes seems to lose the spirit of things as he nitpicks away at stories that were clearly never meant to be taken as historically accurate in the first place.
That said, it's fun to watch Neyer dig deep into the stacks of history to pull out facts and figures from baseball's earliest eras. One of the reasons I (and, I think, most other baseball geeks) love the game so much is that there's such a wealth of information out there, so that the past can really be recreated, reconstructed, and compared across eras in a way that other sports can't be. In tracking down the facts behind the "legends", Neyer brings baseball's past vividly to life.
And regardless of what you think of Neyer's research work, the book is great just as a collection of old baseball yarns, the sort of Nash and Zullo stuff that reeled me in as a kid and has never let me go.
That said, it's fun to watch Neyer dig deep into the stacks of history to pull out facts and figures from baseball's earliest eras. One of the reasons I (and, I think, most other baseball geeks) love the game so much is that there's such a wealth of information out there, so that the past can really be recreated, reconstructed, and compared across eras in a way that other sports can't be. In tracking down the facts behind the "legends", Neyer brings baseball's past vividly to life.
And regardless of what you think of Neyer's research work, the book is great just as a collection of old baseball yarns, the sort of Nash and Zullo stuff that reeled me in as a kid and has never let me go.
August 25, 2008
I'm a huge baseball fan, to the point where I fancy myself a bit of an historian. Also, I have read just about every word Rob Neyer has written for ESPN.com in the past 12 years. So, you'd expect that I'd love this book, right?
You'd be wrong.
Each self-contained chapter is 2-3 pages long, which is nice, and makes it easy to flip through quickly, but the topics are awful. Players you've never heard of (even me, in some cases), and players you never cared about.
And Neyer is attacking newspaper articles from the first half of the 20th century. So what if their facts were off a little? And when I say a little, I mean a little. Like, the writer says something happened in the 8th inning and Neyer proves that it happened in the 7th. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, big deal!
When I was a kid, my dad always told me to not sweat the small stuff. I could say the same to Rob Neyer.
You'd be wrong.
Each self-contained chapter is 2-3 pages long, which is nice, and makes it easy to flip through quickly, but the topics are awful. Players you've never heard of (even me, in some cases), and players you never cared about.
And Neyer is attacking newspaper articles from the first half of the 20th century. So what if their facts were off a little? And when I say a little, I mean a little. Like, the writer says something happened in the 8th inning and Neyer proves that it happened in the 7th. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, big deal!
When I was a kid, my dad always told me to not sweat the small stuff. I could say the same to Rob Neyer.
December 30, 2009
Although the point of this book is to fact-check apocryphal baseball stories (many of which appear in classic and supposedly authoritative books like October 1964), it ends up being about something far bigger than that: the nature of truth itself. Neyer dances around but doesn't avoid this issue, with questions of memory and veracity raised in every chapter. We are left to answer for ourselves whether some version of the truth--as found in the record--is preferable to legends that, however false or misleading, have embedded themselves in the collective memory. Does an unsourced and probably untrue story about "Old Aches and Pains" Luke Appling's ability to foul off pitches tell us more about why he was a great hitter than a detailed, pitch-by-pitch analysis of his at-bats?
November 27, 2012
As Bill James implied in the preface, a lot of these stories would be better if they were true. Or the reader would be happier if he could believe that they are true.
Severl of these stories were big winners. But Neyer's way of describing how he went about debunking them was unnecessary. It should have read "Myth:" and then "Fact:" and the process of going to Retrosheet should have been endnoted, if included anywhere.
There's also something somewhat archaic about all these references to batting average and Retrosheet. Isn't everyone on Play Finder?
Still, I was pretty excited about 6 or so stories included in the book.
Severl of these stories were big winners. But Neyer's way of describing how he went about debunking them was unnecessary. It should have read "Myth:" and then "Fact:" and the process of going to Retrosheet should have been endnoted, if included anywhere.
There's also something somewhat archaic about all these references to batting average and Retrosheet. Isn't everyone on Play Finder?
Still, I was pretty excited about 6 or so stories included in the book.
July 19, 2008
The author researched the tall tales told by and about ballplayers since the beginning of baseball. It was interesting to read the stories as they were told by the ball players but the author's input after researching it was pretty dry and boring. Although it was interesting I can't give it more than three stars... I fell asleep a few times while reading it.
April 21, 2008
This was definitely my favorite of Rob's "Big Books" and a fun read overall. It's best digested in small doses, because otherwise the process--story, background, analysis, result--can get a little repetetive. I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys old baseball stories and tall tales.
May 6, 2009
If you are a big baseball fan, you will love this book. Lots and lots of fun, and an awesome trip through the intersection of baseball lore and modern baseball research, but only for baseball geeks...
May 31, 2009
You know, I have to say this book was fairly boring. And I'm a Neyer guy who loves baseball. But 300 pages of debunking intricacies of baseball stories, most of which are > 60-years-old? Kinda of tiresome.
December 10, 2011
This is a very fun book. The stories are very entertaining on their own, but the fact checking and stories that come from the research make it even more enjoyable. All baseball fans should check this book out.
June 2, 2013
A critical examination of baseball legend, folklore, and oral history. Interesting for student of both baseball and history for the methodology, the analysis, and the interpretation of stories about Ruth, Gehrig, Dean, Wagner and others.
June 23, 2008
The very definition of a coffee table book. Great read when you have a few spare moments.
June 15, 2008
My favorite of the Neyer Big books.
August 7, 2008
A fun read that reinforces the truth that old-timers can't help but make crap up. If it sounds too good to be true, it is.
February 5, 2016
Entertaining, but not indispensable.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews