"The Funniest Baseball Book Ever"

Written by Larry Granillo | 06 April 2010

Last month, I received a copy of The Funniest Baseball Book Ever: The National Pastime's Greatest Quips, Quotations, Characters, Nicknames, and Pranks by Peter Handrinos. As the back of the book claims, "it's the most complete, contemporary resource for baseball humor."

The book is structured in a pretty simple way, with three main sections dividing the quips & quotations, nicknames, and pranks. Each section reads like an encyclopedia or dictionary - or, better yet, like the famous Bartlett's Familiar Quotations - with the various quotations, etc. found underneath their appropriates headings. A sample of these headings from pages 12 and 13 are: Beanballs, Bad Checks, Beer, and Albert Belle. There are also nine "Character Profiles", featuring some of the baseball's more famous personalities, including Bill Veeck, Casey Stengel, and Manny Ramirez.

It's a fun book that's perfectly situated for the coffee table or the bathroom shelf, as it's meant to be picked up and thumbed through at random times. There are no sources for some of the more outrageous stories, but, if you're looking for that, you're better off going to Rob Neyer and his Big Book of Baseball Legends. This is meant to be a collection of the fun and outrageous stories that have been going around big league baseball for decades (and even centuries). In that regard, it's perfect.

The Funniest Baseball Book Ever: The National Pastime's Greatest Quips, Quotations, Characters, Nicknames, and Pranks by Peter Handrinos is released today and can be found online or at your local bookstore.