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BaseballChronology.com: CASEY Award Honorees

By Patrick Mondout

Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine has awarded one baseball book each year since 1983 with their CASEY Award. The magazine, which was started by Mike Shannon and William J. Harrison in 1980, created this first-ever baseball book award to honor the authors and publishers of the best baseball books published each year.

As a literary magazine, the editors do not limit themselves to nonfiction works. Thomas Dyja’s Civil War-based baseball novel Play for a Kingdom won in 1997 and the first ever award went to Eric Rolfe Greenberg historical novel The Celebrant. Learn more about Spitball at their website.

We have a list of all winners from 1983-2007 below, including links to the book at Amazon.com for your convenience. Awards announced early in the year for the previous year's books. Thus, the 2005 award below was presented in April of 2006. Click on a year below to see the winners and finalists.

CASEY AWARD WINNERS
YEAR	WINNER
2007		The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski "When Legendary Negro League player Buck O'Neil asked sports columnist Joe Posnanski how he fell in love with baseball, Posnanski had to think about it. From that question was born the idea behind BASEBALL AND JAZZ. Posnanski and the 94 year old O'Neil decided to spend the 2005 baseball season touring the country in hopes of stirring up the love that first drew them to the game. This book is just as much the story of Buck O'Neil as it is the story of baseball. In a time when disillusioned, steroid–shooting, money hungry athletes define the sport, Buck O'Neil stands out as a man that truly played for the love of the game. Posnanski writes about that love and the one thing that O'Neil loved almost as much as baseball: jazz. BASEBALL AND JAZZ is an endearing step back in time to the days when the crack of a bat and the smoky notes of a midnight jam session were the sounds that brought the most joy to a man's heart." Read more...
2006		A Game of Inches by Peter Morris "A Game of Inches is an encyclopedic story of innovation in baseball. Professional researcher Peter Morris documents every detail of baseball innovations from rules to equipment and from umpires to intentional walks. Who threw the first brushback pitch? That is a hard question whose answer is blurred by the evolution of overhand pitching, changing rules that originally did not allow batters a base after being hit, and increasing competitiveness in the early game. Morris answers the question elegantly, weaving early newspaper accounts with modern scholarship and sensible conclusions." Read more...
2005		Luckiest Man, The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig by Jonathan Eig "Jonathan Eig's Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig offers a fascinating and well-rounded portrait of Gehrig, from his dugout rituals and historic games to his relationships with his mother, wife, coaches, and teammates. His complex friendship with Ruth, who was the polar opposite to Gehrig in nearly every respect, is given particularly vivid attention. Take this revealing description of how the two men began a barnstorming tour together following their 1927 World Series victory: "Ruth tipped the call girls and sent them on their way. Gehrig kissed his mother goodbye." Eig also shares some previously unknown details regarding his consecutive games streak and how he dealt with ALS during the final years of his life. Rich in anecdotes and based on hundreds of interviews and 200 pages of recently discovered letters, the book effectively shows why the Iron Horse remains an American icon to this day." Read more...
2004		Ted Williams: The Life of an American Hero by Leigh Montville "Montville's biography makes a good case that Williams was, if not the greatest hitter ever to play the game, certainly among them. For his focused, scientific approach to hitting, Williams is unmatched in the history of the game. His life, marred perhaps by a temper and occasional immaturity that soured his reputation in Boston, is one of true sports greatness. Early in the book, Montville argues that Williams is less appreciated today than he might be because he played out most of his 19-year career in the era before televised highlights. But with Montville's efforts to capture first-hand accounts of Williams's achievements, The Splendid Splinter's legacy is assured." Read more...
2003		Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis "Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike." Read more...
2002		Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston by Howard Bryant "Shut Out is the compelling story of Boston's racial divide viewed through the lens of one of the city's greatest institutions - its baseball team, and told from the perspective of Boston native and noted sports writer Howard Bryant. This well written and poignant work contains striking interviews in which blacks who played for the Red Sox speak for the first time about their experiences in Boston, as well as groundbreaking chapter that details Jackie Robinson's ill-fated tryout with the Boston Red Sox and the humiliation that followed." Read more...
2001		The Final Season by Tom Stanton "Conceived as a game-by-game journal, The Final Season is filled with baseball. Stanton steps up with graceful musings on the game, the park, the Tigers and their history, and, most spiritedly, a pair of living legends--former right fielder Al Kaline and announcer Ernie Harwell. But it's Stanton's thoughts about family--his own family and how the game and the ballpark have connected generations--that truly resonate. In his prose, this lovely old rust bucket of a ballpark, this repository of so many memories, becomes metaphor." Read more...
2000		Cy Young: A Baseball Life by Reed Browning "He was the winner of 511 major league baseball games, nearly a hundred more than any other pitcher. He threw three no-hitters, including the first perfect game in the new American League. He was among the original twelve players inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame, and his name is now attached to the game's most prestigious pitching award. Yet for all his accomplishments, Cy Young remains to many baseball fans a legendary but little-known figure. This book re-creates the life of Denton True "Cyclone" Young and places his story in the context of a rapidly changing turn-of-the-century America." Read more...
1999		Slouching Towards Fargo by Neal Karlen "Any baseball book beginning with a descriptive list of characters that includes a Benedictine nun, the hold-out college player of the year, a woman pitcher, a 300-pound pig, a seemingly washed-up Darryl Strawberry, a blind announcer, comedian Bill Murray, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, and the spirit of Bill Veeck--the game's greatest showman--hovering over it all as the holy ghost, is a book that swings for the fences. Slouching Toward Fargo does go deep, even off the deep end at times. The really amazing thing is that it's all true." Read more...
1998		Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis by David Pietrusza "Baseball's first commissioner cast such a long and powerful shadow over the game, it's often hard to untangle his contribution from his personality, and his life from his lasting myth. The truth that emerges from this exhaustive and engaging biography of Judge Landis has no problem matching the outsized legend stride for stride. Landis moved into the public spotlight to clean up the national pastime after the disgrace of the 1919 World Series, but there was much more to this complex man and his complex career. Judge and Jury chronicles the entirety." Read more...
1997		Play for a Kingdom by Thomas Dyja "At first glance, the storyline of Thomas Dyja's Play for a Kingdom story sounds corny: a Union company from Brooklyn encounters an Alabama company while on picket duty after the Battle of the Wilderness (May, 1864) and proceeds to challenge them to a series of baseball games before all hell breaks loose in Spottsylvania. The first-time novelist, however, has surprises up his sleeve, and the vividly described sporting matches set up a series of betrayals and double crosses which test the camaraderie of the Union soldiers, calling their commitment to the war effort into question. Although the novel's climax abandons historical materialism for genre convention, the tense mixture of espionage, betrayal, and vivid battle scenes in Play for a Kingdom should please discriminating fans of Civil War fiction." Read more...
1996		Slide, Kelly, Slide: The Wild Life and Times of Mike"King" Kelly, Baseball's First Superstar by Marty Appel "Mike King Kelly was a hard-living, hard-drinking son of a Civil War veteran whose skills at baseball and infectious charm turned him into the game's first hero, and a symbol of what it meant to be a celebrity in America in the 1880s and 1890s. A Hall of Famer and a two-time batting champion, Kelly's greatest contribution was probably in the popularity he brought to the game, which resulted in the 20th century's first fans, as the game began to mature from the rough and tumble times of Mike and his cohorts." Read more...
1995		Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train by Henry W. Thomas "How good a pitcher was Washington Senator ace Walter Johnson? Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Joe Jackson considered him the best ever. His career strikeout record lasted for half a century, and no one's ever come close to his mark of 110 shutouts; some of his Senator teams were so bad, the only way Johnson could win was literally to keep opponents from scoring. Of course, the numbers alone don't tell the story. Johnson was a towering figure in the first quarter of the baseball century. One of the most respected--and liked--men in the game, he was something of an anti-Cobb: straight, honest, and clean, with a life off the field as content as it was accomplished on it. This is an excellent, exhaustive biography, showing clear affection for Johnson from the first pitch: Thomas is Johnson's grandson." Read more...
1994		Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball by John Helyar Wall Street Journal sports reporter (and Barbarians at the Gate co-author) John Helyar has produced an entertaining and concise look at the real reasons that Major League Baseball has become the big business that it is today--and a definitive glimpse at where America's erstwhile national pastime is likely to head in the coming years. With vividly painted portraits of significant players from Ty Cobb to Bud Selig, it offers both a current picture and an historical perspective that will prove invaluable to fans of the game as well as to students of business as the lords of the game continue to struggle with business problems that have forever altered their sport. Read more...
1993		Diamonds: The Evolution of the Ball Park by Michael Gershman
1992		Negro Leagues: A Photographic History by Phil Dixon "More than a decade of research went into the making of this coffee table-style book. The first comprehensive history of black baseball, it follows Simpson Younger, the first Black to play college baseball, to Jackie Robinson breaking the Major Leagues' color barrier after World War II & the subsequent death of the Negro Leagues in the mid-1950s. There's a lot of little-known history along the way. The great players, like Smokey Joe Williams, who once struck out 27 batters in a 10-inning game & was the pitcher Satchel Paige said he admired most. Cool Papa Bell, so fast it was said he could "turn out the light & get in bed before the room got dark"; & Rube Foster, regarded as the father of the Negro Leagues, whose pitching prowess was matched only by his managerial & organizational skills. Then there are the great teams -- the Kansas City Monarchs, who pioneered night games through the use of a portable lighting system; the Pittsburgh Crawfords featuring Satchel Paige & Josh Gibson, the slugging catcher, in the 1930s; the Chicago Giants were led by Rube Foster, both on the mound & at the helm." Read more...
1991		To Everything a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia by Bruce Kuklick "Shibe Park was demolished in 1976, and today its site is surrounded by the devastation of North Philadelphia. Kuklick, however, vividly evokes the feelings people had about the home of the Philadelphia Athletics and later the Phillies." Read more...
1990		Baseball: The People's Game by Harold Seymour "Seymour offers the first book devoted entirely to the history of the game outside of the professional leagues, revealing how, from its early beginnings up to World War II, baseball truly became the great American pastime. He explores the bond between baseball and boys through the decades, the game's place in institutions from colleges to prisons to the armed forces, the rise of women's baseball that coincided with nineteenth century feminism, and the struggles of black players and clubs from the later years of slavery up to the Second World War. Whether discussing the birth of softball or the origins of the seventh inning stretch, Dr. Seymour enriches his extensive research with fascinating details and entertaining anecdotes as well as his own wealth of baseball experience. The People's Game brings to life the central role of baseball for generations of Americans." Read more...
1989		The Pitch That Killed by Mike Sowell The story about the only player ever killed at bat, popular Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians.
1988		Blackball Stars by John B. Holway
1987		Diamonds Are Forever by Paul M. Sommers "This handsome reissue of a beloved baseball classic, sporting a new cover, collects the work of America’s finest writers and artists as they celebrate the passion and excitement of our national pastime. Published in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution, Diamonds Are Forever collects paintings, drawings, photographs, and literary excerpts, illuminating every aspect of the game-the plays, the parks, the players, the fans. Work from John Updike, Andy Warhol, Stephen King, Edna Ferber, Neil Simon, Jacob Lawrence, Roger Angell, and dozens more make this volume an artistic tribute to the quintessentially American game." Read more...
1986		Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James
1985		Good Enough to Dream by Roger Kahn "What is Roger Kahn, best-selling author of The Boys of Summer, doing owning a near-bankrupt minor league baseball team? What is this bunch of major league rejects doing playing their hearts out for an organization that pays peanuts and rations practice baseballs? They -- and you -- are finding out if the dreams that baseball is made of can come true in real life. This funny, poignant story of one special season will make you hesitate before you ever call anything "bush league" again." Read more...
1984		Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers by Peter Golenbock "Before the team headed to Los Angeles in 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers were one of the most colorful and beloved teams in baseball. In Bums, bestselling author Peter Golenbock has compiled a fascinating oral history of the Ebbets Field heroes with recollections from former players, writers, front-office executives, and faithful fans. Dodgers legends such as Pee Wee Reese, Leo Durocher, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Ralph Branca, and many others recall the ups and downs of that unforgettable ball club in their own words." Read more...
1983		The Celebrant by Eric Rolfe Greenberg "In the Ragtime tradition of revolving a fictional world around a factual core, Greenberg's 1983 novel is a polished gem, which is fitting because it is partly built around a jeweler. Though The Celebrant never caught on much with the general public, its adherents were virtual zealots; to them, reading the novel bordered on having a religious experience. Its sophisticated weaving together of the life of Christy Mathewson, the Giants' great hurler and role model, with a family of immigrant Jews in New York in the first quarter of the 20th century captured their imaginations--then sadly disappeared for almost a decade before its welcome reissue. On the surface, The Celebrant is obviously a baseball story--many of "Matty's" greatest on-field feats are meticulously recreated--as well as a story of how deeply the game reached into the lives of new arrivals from the Old World desperate to become American. On a deeper level, it is a stunning meditation on the fragile balance between the heroism of a man who won World Series rings and the hero worship of the young jeweler who made those rings for him. Its simplicity is deceptive. The Celebrant does much more than celebrate; it paints the corners of another era and another ethos with the command and control Matty himself was known to exhibit." Read more...
BEST BASEBALL BOOKS OF EACH YEAR ACCORDING TO SPITBALL MAGAZINE