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No one knows New York City better than Kevin Baker, so it's only natural that he would breathe such spectacular life into the stories of the National Pastime in the Capital of Baseball. A remarkable, complicated doubleheader of a book.
— Ken Burns, filmmaker
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Let me put it this way: You’re going to beg for extra innings. Without missing a scandal or a sensation, with an eye on how assimilation transforms the picture, Kevin Baker has written a buoyant, double coming-of-age story. He leaves plenty of myths — and Abner Doubleday — by the wayside. He carries us on a high-octane tour from baseball’s early, pre-league days to the first box scores, past Giants, Bridegrooms, and Highlanders, to stadium singalongs and brawling, betting, and umpire-flattening. A naked Babe Ruth is the least of the wonders in this exuberant, deliriously readable, glorious grand slam of a book.
— Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
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Kevin Baker’s The New York Game, which chronicles the story, characters and madcap happenings of baseball in New York, with its Robins and Highlanders and Superbras and Giants, will be a joy for any fan of baseball or Americana. It’s as colorful as it is strange, and is in fact the story of America told in another way.
— Rich Cohen, author of When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Best Season
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Let me put it this way: You’re going to beg for extra innings. Without missing a scandal or a sensation, with an eye on how assimilation transforms the picture, Kevin Baker has written a buoyant, double coming-of-age story. He leaves plenty of myths — and Abner Doubleday — by the wayside. He carries us on a high-octane tour from baseball’s early, pre-league days to the first box scores, past Giants, Bridegrooms, and Highlanders, to stadium singalongs and brawling, betting, and umpire-flattening. A naked Babe Ruth is the least of the wonders in this exuberant, deliriously readable, glorious grand slam of a book.
— Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
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This big boy may be the greatest-ever baseball book. If 'greatest' means most comprehensive, lively, erudite, and fun. It's also the consummate New York book. Imagine Robert Caro and Roger Angell joining forces, and turning to Doctorow for a spit polish. I read The New York Game in a state of protracted awe.
— Darin Strauss, National Book Award Winning author of Half a Life
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A triumph. This book stands among the finest of all baseball histories, with scholarly muscle and breathtaking literary grace. The New York Game will help readers see our national pastime—and our nation—through clear new eyes. I loved this book.
— Jonathan Eig, author of King
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Let me put it this way: You’re going to beg for extra innings. Without missing a scandal or a sensation, with an eye on how assimilation transforms the picture, Kevin Baker has written a buoyant, double coming-of-age story. He leaves plenty of myths — and Abner Doubleday — by the wayside. He carries us on a high-octane tour from baseball’s early, pre-league days to the first box scores, past Giants, Bridegrooms, and Highlanders, to stadium singalongs and brawling, betting, and umpire-flattening. A naked Babe Ruth is the least of the wonders in this exuberant, deliriously readable, glorious grand slam of a book.
— Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
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No one knows New York City better than Kevin Baker, so it's only natural that he would breathe such spectacular life into the stories of the National Pastime in the Capital of Baseball. A remarkable, complicated doubleheader of a book.
— Ken Burns, filmmaker
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This big boy may be the greatest-ever baseball book. If 'greatest' means most comprehensive, lively, erudite, and fun. It's also the consummate New York book. Imagine Robert Caro and Roger Angell joining forces, and turning to Doctorow for a spit polish. I read The New York Game in a state of protracted awe.
— Darin Strauss, National Book Award Winning author of Half a Life
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Kevin Baker has effortlessly braided a century of baseball and New York history into a single, glorious narrative that is as witty and rollicking as it is surprising and enlightening. His command of both of his subjects is awe-inspiring, and yet he unspools it all with the grace and ease of a perfect swing. The New York Game will have you reading passages out loud to anyone within earshot. It's the most exhilarating book I've encountered in years.
— Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning
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Baseball fans beyond Gotham’s gravitational pull might bristle at the notion that New York was the epicenter of the creation and growth of the game. But Baker’s raucous, revelatory, lovingly detailed account will win them over from the first pitch.... Baker lays out the early history of the game in the city, then seamlessly weaves together the vibrant origin stories of the New York Yankees, New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers, and the city’s Cuban and African American teams...A spellbinding history of a game and the city where it found itself.
— Alan Moores, Booklist, starred review* "Bestseller [Kevin] Baker (Paradise Alley) returns with a comprehensive and evocative account of America’s national pastime in the country’s largest city...In textured and painterly prose, Baker tells the parallel stories of how the game and the city developed across more than a century, from the 1820s through the 1940s—to that end, the fantastic concluding bibliographical essay demonstrates the degree to which Baker’s work is built on the shoulders of the giants of New York City history writing. This doorstopper is a great way for baseball fans to kick-start the 2024 season.
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This big boy may be the greatest-ever baseball book. If 'greatest' means most comprehensive, lively, erudite, and fun. It's also the consummate New York book. Imagine Robert Caro and Roger Angell joining forces, and turning to Doctorow for a spit polish. I read The New York Game in a state of protracted awe.
— Darin Strauss, National Book Award winning author of Half a Life