Hanukka gift idea: Baseball Americana

It’s no exaggeration to say that I get a large percentage of the new baseball titles that come out every year. My wife lives in constant fear that the floor of the attic — where I keep my baseball library — will collapse on us while we sleep, crushing us under the weight of some 2,000 books.

I have them set up by subject matter: biographies, statistics, team histories, etc. But of all the sub-genres of baseball books, my favorite is are the coffee table editions. Usually published as “gift books,” they are among the most well-produced, handsome, and eclectic titles available each year.

This year’s “leader” has to be Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress (Harper Collins). It combines the best of all worlds: concise text, gorgeous illustrations, and a thoughtful layout. Many books of this kind rely on the classic photos: Ty Cobb sliding into a base with his spikes high; Mantle and Maris standing back to back in a 1961 pose; Yankees skipper Casey Stengel winking at the photographer. Not so here. According to Frank Ceresi, one of the all-stars behind the project, the Library of Congress has hundreds of thousands of illustrations and publications from which these few hundred were culled. Imagine the fun of sifting through all those old photos, pieces of sheet music, baseball cards, etc. Ceresi said the project took two and a half years; time well spent.

Ceresi — the East Coast director of acquisitions and consignments for SCP/Southeby’s Sports Auctions and principal of FC Associates, an outfit that provides consulting, professional appraisals, and legal service for museums and other venues — spent a few minutes with The Bookshelf discussing the laborious — but fun — process of doing the research, making the selections, and possible future projects, along with a few bits of behind-the-scenes trivia and why the book “stops” in the late 1960s.

You can listen to an interview with Ceresi on my other blog, Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf.

These are just a few samples of the wonderful photos and illustrations you’ll find in Baseball Americana:

Frank Chance baseball card...

and the original photo.

Visit the Harper Collins website for another good sampling of the book. You should also drop by the Library of Congress’s website for further information about their baseball collections as well as see what baseball items (almost 10,000 items) are included in their on-line catalog.

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Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports © 2009 New Jersey Jewish News

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