In the past few months I’ve been lucky enough to become the owner of two books on baseball. The first one, “The Code: Baseball’s Unwritten Rules and its Ignore at your own risk Code of Conduct“, was written by a guy with contacts in the Twins organization because many of the quotes about baseball’s code came straight from current & former players as well as coaches. Chris bought it for me in order to complete his “free” shipping minimum on Amazon.com. Yes, it probably would have been cheaper to just pay for the shipping - but this way I got a book out of the deal!

The book was all about the player’s code. The quotes from players and coaches were interesting because they would explain how that particular person interpreted the (unwritten) code. Older players talking about younger players, pitchers talking about their teammates, etc. Generally, I think the book probably could have been 100 fewer pages because there was a lot of redundancy…but overall it was fun to read. Even the umpires got involved to talk about how they’re supposed to call teams who are pitching at each other which the umps KNOW is part of the code being played out and it isn’t fair if the other team doesn’t get to retaliate!

The second, “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: Heart-Pounding, Jaw-Dropping, and Gut-Wrenching Moments from Minnesota Twins History“, arrived in my stocking on Christmas morning. I hadn’t heard of this book before but it was pretty fun to read. The author divided up the chapters by certain highlights and low lights of the Twins history. It was written after the completion of the 2006 season so it was relatively current too! The book covered the careers of the obvious famous past players as well as some that I had never heard of.

Did you know that a pitcher who gave up at least one run without getting any outs has an ERA of infinity!?!? There’s a Twins player stuck with that for…infinity. I’d say I learned a lot from reading the book and I finished it in just under a week so - it was good! It definitely gives me baseball fever - only 4 months to go until opening day & it’s FREEZING outside today! I think it’s going to be a long 4 months.

If anyone is interested in reading one of these, let me know. I’d be happy to share!

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