On June 2, 2010, Armando Galarraga threw baseball’s twenty-first perfect game. In nearly four hundred thousand contests in more than 130 years of Major League Baseball, it has only happened twenty times. “The perfect game is one of the rarest accomplishments in sports. Toni Stone was the first woman to play professional baseball on men’s teams.” Nobody’s Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History by Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce with Daniel Paisner Curveball tells the inspiring story of baseball’s ‘female Jackie Robinson,’ a woman whose ambition, courage, and raw talent propelled her from ragtag teams barnstorming across the Dakotas to playing in front of large crowds at Yankee Stadium. There was only one problem-every card was stacked against her. “From the time she was a girl growing up in the shadow of Lexington Park in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Toni Stone knew she wanted to play professional baseball. Illustrations from oil paintings by the author.” Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League by Martha Ackmann “Using an ‘Everyman’ player as his narrator, Kadir Nelson tells the story of Negro League baseball from its beginnings in the 1920s through the decline after Jackie Robinson crossed over to the majors in 1947. We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball b y Kadir Nelson So, what do you do when you love something this much? Read more about it, of course! Here are some of the best baseball books out there, whether you’re looking for a history lesson, some tips about understanding the game, novels to get lost in, or books for kids. Whether you’re at the sandlot or a major league park, it’s a long, humbling, but nevertheless rewarding season for players and fans alike. And it’s no different playing baseball or softball in the backyard, at the little league field, or for your high school or college team-baseball is indeed a game of life. There is no time clock, no uniform field dimensions, players have to deal with the quirks of the ballpark, the personalities of the umpires and players, the energy of the crowd. There’s a lot of failing in baseball and overcoming those failures together. The same team can win a blowout one afternoon and lose by a score of 1–0 the next day against the same opponent. Any team can win on any day, no matter what the statistics say.

There’s so much truth in this statement, and it sums up why I love baseball so much. It’s not perfect, but it feels like it is. When legendary Yankees manager Joe Torre was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he closed out his speech with a thought I always go back to whenever I’m asked why I love the game: “There is a power to both patience and persistence.

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