Official "Top 5 favorite" list thread

5 Worst Books About Baseball

1. Dynasty by Peter Golenbock. This book was a huge best-seller. It was riddled with errors - factual errors, silly errors, and never checked what older players remembered. Part of the problem might have been this - then, more than now, there were probably errors who knew where to place commas but nothing about curve balls or the Cubs.

2. David Halberstam's books - The Summer of 49 and October 1964. OK, so David Halberstam is Mister Big Shot Journalist. He figured out that what the government, the Kennedy Administration, was telling us about Viet Nam was a lot of hooey. Great, you got your Pulitzer for that. The problem is he wrote these baseball books like a fan. The sports department is the Toy Department, so David Halberstam is slumming and I suppose we should all be grateful that he deigns to write a book about baseball. Bill James picked apart the factual errors and silly stuff in The Summer of 49. Oh, and the fact that world events were going on during the period when baseball games were going on? I would have never guessed - I might have thought there wasn't a Cold War or other things happening in 1964 if I hadn't read Halberstam's books. Maybe that's a little harsh, and his book "The Breaks of the Game" about the Portland Trailblazers and "Teammates" about the four Red Sox players in old age were good. But the attitude just annoyed me.

3. Roger Kahn's book Pete Rose: My Story - Roger Kahn wrote an article about writing this book and how he got hoodwinked and was limited by the contract he signed. There was no insight and a book by Michael Sokolov (sp?) called Hustle was so much better and made Kahn look bad. This is an example of how not to write a book.

4. Every book by Milton Shapiro, Gene Schoor, and Al Hirshberg on baseball. When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I would read pretty much any book on baseball. I realize this covers a lot of books, but they were all basicly the same book. It seemed the author would get some clips and records, maybe interview the player, write it quickly, and presto, you had a book. It was the ultimate in hagiography (somebody correct me if I spelled that wrong - I should have paid more attention in college and never heard the word until I saw this board). If you are young, you missed some great books that I mentioned in the top 5 books and I hope you will be fortunate enough to find and read The Glory of Their Times. If not, you are fortunate they don't write awful books like this any more.

5. Perfect, I'm Not by David Wells. It takes a unique person to admit their own autobiography isn't true. This is usually followed by shifting the blame to the cowriter. Darryl Strawberry co-wrote a book with Art Rust Jr. and wrote about some complaint about race with the Mets, saying it was like Dred Scott Stadium. One of the reporters asked Strawberry, "Who was Dred Scott" and Strawberry had no idea. What made Wells book even worse, in my opinion, is that he probably could have told some great stories and did a really great book.

 

PC - I haven't driven all of the way to Sacramento on I-5, but I did go to the road you get off on and go to Gilroy before you go to San Jose and San Francisco. I didn't think it was as bad as I-10 east of Palm Springs. The I-5 drive isn't stimulating and I only did it once, so maybe the fact that I was amazed you could grow so much cotton in California, so maybe that kept me from going crazy.

 

5 Favorite "Go To" Baseball Trivia's in a Bar:
1. Only 2 players to homer both before 20 and after 40?
2. Mays hit #600 pinch hitting for future 2x mvp?
3. First University/College to have 2 HOF'ers?
4. Inept franchise offense award: Mets all-time hit leader?
5. In 973 ab's Joe Niekro had one career HR; off who? (duh).

 

How could I have forgotten about those? :-[ (slapping forehead)....

Revised --->
Top 5 US Cities in the title of a Springsteen song
1. NYC Serenade
2. Pittsburgh (A Good Man is Hard to Find)
3. Atlantic City (studio, not live)
4. Santa Ana
5. Sandy (4th of July, Asbury Park)

 

No Ball Four ???

Top Five Monkees Songs:
1. Last Train to Clarksville.
2. Not Your Stepping Stone.
3. Pleasant Valley Sunday.
4. Mary Mary.
5. Daydream Believer.

 

Five Favorite Yankees since I became a fan in '75 (at 6 years old)
5. Don Mattingly
4. Derek Jeter
3. Thurman Munson
2. Ron Guidry
1. Graig Nettles
(sorry I have a love for those Bronx Zoo Yankees of my youth)

 

Top 5 Books Made Into Movies/Miniseries

1. Winds of War/War and Remembrance
2. The Right Stuff
3. Gettysburg (from The Killer Angels)
4. Band of Brothers
5. To Kill A Mockingbird

 

TOP 5 STEPHEN KING NOVELS
5. The Dead Zone
4. Firestarter
3. Misery
2. It
1. The Stand

 

Top 5 favorite Brewers since I became a fan in 1987

1. Paul Molitor
2. Jeff Cirillo
3. Robin Yount
4. Prince Fielder
5. Chris Capuano

 

I would put Different Seasons on that list. Great stories.

 

My 5 favorite Astros players

1. Craig Biggio
2. Jose Cruz
3. Roger Metzger
4. Frank LaCorte
5. Dickie Thon

 

Top five Heart songs:

1. How Can I Refuse.
2. Heartless.
3. Barracuda.
4. Magic Man.
5. Straight On.