Beside the long hours they're open, the convenience of their old books at ridiculous prices -$1 for a hardcover and 50 cents for a paperback is the going rate, but sometimes they go for as cheap as a quarter or a dime.
And so, tonight, I expanded my baseball collection:
Veeck, As in Wreck (Veeck/Linn) -- The autobiography of Bill Veeck, which I've been meaning to read for years.
Mind Game: How to Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning (Baseball Prospectus/Goldman) -- The problem with some books is they wind up looking ridiculous in retrospect (and a lot of them wind up going up for sale at the library as a result). For example, I had a chance to buy Tim McCarver's book, The Perfect Season - Why 1998 Was Baseball's Greatest Year, but time has shown that year was, in fact, its most steroidal (is that a word?). This one, by the usually reliable guys at BP, should last.
Blue Skies, Green Fields: A Celebration of 50 Major League Baseball Stadiums (Rosen) -- Coffee table book (not really well designed, unfortunately) featuring great stadiums of the past and present. I haven't seen this very often, so I was happy to find it hear.
Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty (Levitt) -- Published by University of Nebraska Press, which means it's a labor of love for the author. Barrow was the VP/GM of the Yankees from the 1920s through late 1940s.
Yankee for Life: My 40-Year Journey in Pinstripes (Murcer/Waggoner) -- Yeah, I can't stand the Yankees, but Murcer was a good guy, and one of the few reasons to watch the team in the early 1970s (when they featured an infield of Danny Cater, Horace Clarke, Gene Michael, and Jerry Kenney).
Built to Win: Inside Stories and Leadership Strategies From Baseball's Winningest GM (Schuerholz/Guest) -- probably not the first book I'll read, but he did build a fantastic run of Braves teams.
Total spent: five dollars.
Yes, I'm a happy man tonight.
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