I'm pretty sure The Natural by Bernard Malamud is old enough to be a classic. If you have only seen the movie the book is very different, especially the ending.

From 1914: You Know Me, Al: A Busher's Letters. By Ring Lardner. His non-baseball short stories are worth reading too, esp. The Golden Honeymoon, a short story up there with The Death of Ivan Ilych.

Bang the Drum Slowly makes the cut,  a 1956 baseball novel by Mark Harris. As old as me!

1962 saw a classic memoir: Veeck as in Wreck: the Autobiography of Bill Veeck. By Bill Veeck and Ed Lin

The tell- all books of the 1970s (Ball Four) don' t make it, nor do NFL books like North Dallas Forty.

It seems like baseball always gets the biggest share of sports writing.

I am getting Joshua Slocum's Sailing alone around the world. I read that a long time ago. Also read The Gypsy Moth Circles the Earth by Sir Frances Chichester. Can we count sailing as a sport?

so the woman wanted to marry the guy who could run the fastest. I have to say, you women have low standards.

No, Charles, you really misread that old tale!    She didn't want to marry at all, her Daddy the King insisted upon it . . . . .

If I ever read it it is long forgotten now.

There is a novel that has the opposite situation. Boy and girl are in love. Father will only approve the marriage if the boy can name all the types of Eucalyptus trees growing on the father's property. I think I have the synopsis right. The book is Eucalyptus by Murray Bail.

How about Siegfried Sassoon's factionalized autobiography, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man?  I haven't read it yet , but it's on my list of World War I classics I want to read.

I think it covers cricket matches, as well.

Janet E

wow. I thought Sassoon only wrote poetry. I would like to read that book you mention.

I found a book on amazon that has all three novels in one book. The fox hunting one is the first. The book was less than 8$ including shipping. It is coming from England. I didn't see anything here at pbs by Sassoon.

My standards for "classic" have always been much more restrictive than others, but this one, now very hard to find, achieved immediate cult classic status. About a baseball fan who created his own imaginary baseball league that he played on his own baseball board game. And, as Willie warns of in a song, his dream started dreaming him.

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.   by Robert Coover

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.   by Robert Coover

You're right. That book is hard to find.

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man

I read this a few weeks ago. It's a very British book. Spent some time looking up terms I didn't know. Begins with narrator as a young boy. Ends with the early stages of the 1st WW. It was interesting view of time and place. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would place it about 7. I still have the next 2 books in the trilogy that I will probably get to later.

just discovered The Sun Field by Heywood Broun. a baseball book. written in the 1920's. I ordered it recently but haven't gotten it yet.