Errors and Fouls: Inside Baseball’s 99 Most Popular Myths

Baseball is the most storied of American sports, but not all the stories are true. Likewise, most baseball traditions are wonderful. But not all of them. The game’s most basic elements have often been misrepresented, misunderstood, and misremembered through the years. All along, fiction has coexisted with fact, hyperbole has mixed with history, and exaggeration has been mistaken for explanation. Meanwhile, baseball’s yen for tradition has left many fans and even baseball commentators unduly attached to stale ways of thinking. Peter Handrinos breaks from the past and provides an entertaining antidote to its outmoded ideas and excessive nostalgia.

About the Author

Peter Handrinos is the author of Best New York Sports Arguments: The 100 Most Controversial, Debatable Questions for Die-Hard New York Fans (Sourcebooks, 2006); The Truth About Ruth (And More): Behind Yankees'Myths, Legends, and Lore (Triumph Books, 2006); and The Funniest Baseball Book Ever: The National Pastime’s Greatest Quips, Quotations, Characters, Nicknames, and Pranks (Andrews McMeel, 2010). A graduate of Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Virginia School of Law, he currently lives and practices law in Norwalk, Connecticut. Of his work, Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Wolff has said, I’ve never seen an author take on so many sports topics, or approach them with such evident preparation and joy.