Brushbacks and Knockdowns: The Greatest Baseball Debates of Two Centuries

Allen Barra is back with Brushbacks and Knockdowns, his newest retrospective of baseball history and folklore. Barra, whose weekly sports column "By The Numbers" earned him millions of readers in The Wall Street Journal, offers solid answers based on exhaustive research and analysis. But Barra risks inciting barroom riots with essays covering such topics as "Who was a better hitter, Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds?," "Is Barry Bonds been the best player over 35 in baseball history?," "Who is the best player not in the Hall of Fame,?" "Who was the most valuable team player in baseball history?" (Hint: His name rhymes with 'Yogi'), and "Is baseball's talent pool shrinking?" He also casts his eye at the current state of Major League Baseball in his insightful essay titled "The Myth of Competitive Balance, or How Bud Selig Almost Suckered You Into Ruining the Baseball Season."

And for the first time Allen Barra will make some projections on the greatest players and most innovative new trends in the first half of the 21st century.

In addition to his usual comparisons and arguments, Barra opens the door to even more controversial subjects, using statistics to give decisive answers to such questions as "Who's Right, The Owners or The Players?" and telling readers, step-by-step, how the new Basic Agreement is going to affect baseball every year up to 2006, when baseball is due for its ugliest labor showdown yet. He also addresses the issue of steroids in baseball -- how they undermine statistics and the fan's faith in the integrity of the statistics that have been the game's lifeline for more than a century.
In Brushbacks and Knockdowns, Barra takes on baseball's toughest arguments. Readers will never think about baseball's greatest stars, situations, and match-ups in the same way again.

Allen Barra has written for The Wall Street Journal since 1995 and has been a regular contributor to The New York Times for more than fifteen years. He also writes for "The Sports Nut" on Slate.com and is a regular on NPR. He lives in South Orange, New Jersey.