Monday, May 24, 2010

Book Review: The Rollie Fingers Baseball Bible

Rollie Fingers and Yellowstone Ritter. The Rollie Fingers Baseball Bible. Covington, KY: Clerisy Press, 2010, 279 pp., $14.95 (cover price).

This is the second volume of Rollie Fingers’ Baseball Follies collection, and it’s every bit as good as the first book, Rollie’s Follies. (Click here for my review of that book.)

Like the first book, this one has tons of great short stories, facts, stats, history, and other fun baseball stuff presented in small, easy-to-read bits. It’s clear Mr. Fingers and Mr. Ritter love the game and its history, and they just can’t get enough of talking about it. I love how easy it is to read – it didn’t matter if I had five minutes or five hours, I would spend quality time with this book.

Fingers is fantastic at weaving fascinating tidbits into every piece or finding interesting common threads between seemingly unrelated topics. Everything about it is intriguing - even the stats read like a good story. I love all the historical pieces; I really learned a lot of great stuff. And Ritter’s “drunken rants” are hilarious, if not totally logical. All the chapters feature a lot of humor, fun, and positivity so that I found myself smiling as I was reading.

Again, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I highly recommend it. Another “A” effort.

I didn’t see anything about another book coming. I sure hope there is one; there are so many more great baseball stories I want to learn.

Oh, and if you happen to pick it up, be sure to flip it over and look at the back cover. You’ll see a quote from someone you know.

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