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Batters up! Here are the heavy hitters of baseball writing and reporting, the raconteurs and the players of America’s favorite game, all in one big, entertaining volume that no fan can do without. The featured luminaries include Zane Grey, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyan, W.P. Kinsella, Red Smith, Tim McCarver, Pete Rose, and George Will, and they all weigh in with wit and an obvious love of the sport. Many offer a fascinating glimpse into baseball’s history, such as Walt Whitman, who reports on a rugged game played even before the Civil War. Russell Baker provides lessons on the art of firing, “learned at the knee of Mr. Steinbrenner.” An excerpt from Jim Bouton’s groundbreaking classic Ball Four examines the sport’s unrelenting power over him: “You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” With these stories and essays, baseball buffs will relive important moments, such as Candy Cummings’ perfecting the first curve ball, baseball’s drawing the color line in 1887, and Bob Carroll’s uncovering Nate Colbert’s hidden RBI record in 1972.