Each year, hundreds of thousands of visitors make the trek to Cooperstown, NY, to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum; many more fans follow news of inductions. In Cooperstown Confidential, journalist Ze'ev Chafets takes a critical look at the Hall of Fame from its founding to its role in breaking down--or holding up--racial barriers. In addition, he takes a close look at the rules for induction into the Hall, paying special attention to the "character clause," which Chafets says has allowed voters to exclude certain players based on race or personal history. For more on the history of baseball's Hall of Fame, try A Great Day in Cooperstown, by Jim Reisler.

Praised by reviewers from singer/songwriter Tom Waits to Newsweek to The Onion's A.V. Club, this provocatively titled book is really about how the way that we produce and listen to music changed in the 20th century. One of the theories that author Elijah Wald presents is that advances in recording technology made popular music less something you danced to and more something you listened to; he also discusses the contributions of musicians who, though influential in their day, have now fallen out of favor. If you consider yourself a music historian, you'll want to give this alternative history a try.

This collection of sports journalist Roger Angell's favorite pieces on baseball spans his career from 1962 (when the New York Mets made their debut) to the fall of 2002 (when the Anaheim Angels won the World Series) and will be appreciated by baseball lovers everywhere. Divided into the three seasons of baseball (spring training, the regular season, and the World Series in the fall), the pieces include analysis and passion, humor and history. Though stats play a part, Angell brings the people behind the stats to life, showing us that he is, in the words of one reviewer, "our best writer on baseball and one of our best writers, period" (Booklist).

There are plenty of baseball books out there that look at a specific game (Joshua Prager's The Echoing Green), a season (Cait Murphy's Crazy '08), a rivalry (Mike Vaccaro's Emperors and Idiots), or the career of a particular player (Jonathan Eig's Luckiest Man), but in Three Nights in August we're treated to something a little different--a behind-the-scenes look at a three-game series between the St. Louis Cardinals and their nemesis, the Chicago Cubs. Having had complete access to the clubhouse for the entire season, however, H.G. Bissinger is able to delve deeply into baseball strategy and the relationships between Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and his players. Baseball fans of all stripes--not just Redbirds fans--will not want to miss it.

In the 1940s, four men who wore the Boston Red Sox uniform--Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, and Johnny Pesky--forged what would become a more than 50-year friendship that would see them through Hall of Fame inductions, ill health, and personal upheavals. Beginning with the 1,300-mile road trip that DiMaggio and Pesky made to visit the dying Williams in October of 2001, The Teammates is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam's touching tribute to their long-lasting friendship and a chronicle of their days with the Sox.

If you need help getting up to speed in your baseball knowledge as the World Series approaches, or you've got the basics down but want to know more about the lesser-known and more complex aspects of the game, you're in luck. Professional fan Zack Hample (he's snagged more than 4,000 baseballs from 46 different MLB stadiums) has compiled everything you might ever want to know about baseball in this informative guide. From the difference between the various pitches to why the letter K represents a strikeout, you'll get what you're looking for here. Keep an eye out next year for Hample's third book on baseball.

A few years ago, Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, did something that no one thought possible--he built a successful baseball team out of relative unknowns and veterans on a payroll budget smaller than any other in the Major League. In 2002, journalist Michael Lewis was granted enough access to be present at many of the trades Beane orchestrated, resulting in a book that showcases Beane's abilities and a strategy that relied heavily on a creative use of statistics. Moneyball was a huge hit when it was published in 2003; if you haven't read it by now, it's not too late, as Lewis is rumored to be writing a sequel, called Underdogs.

Though Joe Torre is currently the manager of the L.A. Dodgers, during his years managing the NY Yankees his team won ten American League East Division titles, six American League pennants, and four World Series. With the help of sportswriter Tom Verducci, Torre provides a thought-provoking and candid behind-the-scenes study of the Yankees organization during his time there, and shares the challenges he faced while managing a clubhouse full of superstars. Though The Yankee Years is not properly a memoir--other voices are heard throughout the book--this bestselling book is worth reading even if you're not a Yankees fan.