Reference material

I recently obtained a copy of The Baseball Novel (McFarland & Co.: 2008) by Noel Schraufnagel. This is an invaluable resource for anyone who is a fan of baseball fiction. Schraufnagel has included an enormous amount of bibliographic information, including lists, plot capsules, and his own personal reviews. Schraufnagel presents summaries for over 400 titles between 1838(!) and 2008. Even if you find that you don't agree with Schraufnagel's conclusions as to the relative merits of a particular novel, this bibliography is valuable just for the list of titles. I found myself going through the book to identify titles I hand't heard of and I came across at least a dozen that I've added to my future acquisition list.

The reviews contained in The Baseball Novel are helpful and insightful. You have to place some level of credibility with Schraufnagle, just because of the sheer number of books he's read. I compared a few of Shraufnagel's opinions with my own. I was pleasantly surprised that his opinion of Veteran's Park (Don J. Snyder, Ivy Books: 1988) matched well with my own opinion: that it is a greatly over-looked novel of literary merit within the genre. In glancing through his reviews, I liked his side notes as to titles that are must-reads versus those that should be relegated to the "worst" of the category.

Schraufnagel admits to limiting his annotations to adult novels because of the likely similarly large number of juvenile baseball titles (particularly published prior to the 1960s). But the dividing line between adult and juvenile fiction is gray. Just note Schraufnagel's inclusion of the John Tunis series. But I'll go along with this, only because of the time it would have taken to include them all.

This is the first reference piece I've acquired to accompany my collection of baseball fiction. I've put Andy McCue's Baseball by the Books (William C. Brown: 1991) and Lauricella's Home Games (McFarland & Co.: 1999), among a few others, as other references I want to obtain, if nothing else, than to balance out opinions and deepen my understanding of baseball fiction.

I appreciate bibliographic references like these that treat full-length novels, but that's only really a segment of baseball fiction. In addition to novels (both adult and juvenile), there are novellas and short stories. I'd love to see someone put together an all-inclusive bibliography of all types - novels and short stories - categorized by sub-genre (e.g., adult, juvenile, mystery, science fiction, etc.) Sort of a "baseball fiction in and out of print" type of reference. Wow, now that would be reference book!