This is one of my all-time favorite books. I happened upon it by accident years ago on the discount shelf at Crown Books. I've read it all the way through at least five time and leaf through it regularly. It's nostalgic, informative and laugh-out-loud funny. If you're a baseball fan, you need to read this book, especially if you're a baseball fan who ever collected baseball cards. If you aren't a baseball fan, you need to become one just so you can appreciate this book.

You won't have heard of many of the players, but that's OK. You can just substitute most any Cub and get the joke. But at the same time you'll understand just how much the game has changed. These were the players who made $15,000 a year and worked as mail carriers or car salesmen in the off season.

Here's a taste: (everything else in this review is directly from the book).

— On Ken Hubbs: Just as the fifties was a bad decade for rock and roll singers traveling in private airplanes — Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, the Big Bopper — so was the sixties a bad decade for professional athletes traveling in private airplanes — Rocky Marciano, Tony Lema, Rafael Ossuna. Kenny Hubbs was an extremely promising young second baseman with the Chicago Cubs, .287 batting average in 1964, rookie of the year at twenty-two. He was killed in the crash of a private plane over Provo, Utah, on February 23, 1965. We still remember you, Kenny.

— On Hector Lopez: Now, it is not necessary for me to declare that Hector Lopez was the worst fielding third baseman in the history of baseball. Everyone knows that. It is more or less a matter of public record. But I do feel called upon somehow to try and indicate, if only for the historical archivists among us, the sheer depths of his innovative barbarousness. Hector Lopez was quite literally a butcher. Pure and simple. A butcher. His range was about one step to either side, his hands seemed to be made of concrete, and his defensive attitude was so cavalier and so arbitrary as to hardly constitute an attitude at all. Hector did not simply field a ground ball, he attacked it. Like a farmer trying to kill a snake with a stick. And his mishandling of routine infield flies was the sort of thing of which legends are made. Hectore Lopez was not just a bad fielder for a third baseman. In fact, Hector Lopez was not just a bad fielder for a baseball player. Hector Lopez was, when every factor has been taken into consideration, a bad fielder for a human being. The stands are full of obnoxious leather-lunged cretins who insist they can play better than most major leaguers. Well, in Hector's case they could have been right.

— On Jesus McFarlane: Jesus McFarlane was a living testimonial, on the other hand, to the fact that naming your child after a famous celebrity does not necessarily help.