Baseball's Book of Firsts

Lloyd Johnson descends into the dusty catacombs of baseball's archives and emerges with a multitude of first-time happenings--some obvious, some not, and some simply surprising. Running from the sacred to the arcane, they range from categories like the first relief pitcher, the first pitcher caught doctoring a ball, the first third baseman to charge bunts, the first championship team to be broken up, the first player to hold out for more money, the first manager to endorse nutrient drinks (and no, it wasn't Tommy Lasorda; he's late by more than a century), the first road trip, the first ballpark to burn down, the first uniform numbers, the first box score, the first player stalked by a fan, the first ... well, you get the gist.

Each inaugural moment is assigned its own page with appropriate illustrations; even better, each is linked to the long chain of baseball's evolution. Which is how the irrepressible Lasorda gets his due. He is a footnote to the fact that manager Charlie Comiskey, better known as the imperiously frugal future owner of the White Sox, spiked the punch for the St. Louis Browns with nourishments that may or may not have helped his Brownies, one of the more hapless squads in Major League history, digest four consecutive titles in the ancient 1880s. --Jeff Silverman