Great Baseball Books

Time and Again
Finney, Jack
Scribner, 1995 (orig. 1970)

For my last selection, I am going out side the world of baseball. But only to a point. This classic book on time travel is really a mode of transport the reader can take by immersing himself in any of the books previously listed.

A man is transported from the middle of the twentieth century back to New York City of the 1880s. Finney’s masterpiece does not talk about baseball, but it opens a door to the past. It is far stronger than his sequel, Time and Again (which was also made into a movie). For more than 20 years, he was asked to do a follow-up book, and he finally wrote the weaker sequel shortly before his death. Perhaps when a writer crafts a magnificent book and then puts down the pen forever (Harper Lee with To Kill a Mockingbird or Greenberg, see above), there’s a certain logic to that decision.