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FROM THE DESK

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Chasing Bonds and Other Sports Reads - June 8, 2006

If there are still those among you who have not yet had your fill of the Giants slugger after his aborted ESPN show, multiple reams of copy about him in newspapers and magazines and an Internet explosion of data, gossip, editorializing about this most unpleasant of men - there is now for your consumption two books for the purchasing on Barry Bonds.

"Love Me, Hate Me" by Jeff Pearlman (HarperCollins, $25.95, 365 pages) is an overstuffed Bonds fest with over 500 interviews used to give heft to this no holds barred profile of Barry Bonds, the man we know too much about. The book makes for good reading.

By Mark Fainaru - Wada and Lance Williams, San Francisco Chronicle reporters. "Game of Shadows" (Gotham Books, $26.00, 332 pages) is a more focused tome as it has in its sightlines Bonds, Balco and Steroids.

Part detective story, part investigative reporting, part excessive rehashing of newspaper clips, "Game of Shadows " does put the very overexposed Mr. Bonds in the most compromising of positions. There is a lot to digest here.

In the completely revised and updated second edition of "The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball" by David Nemic (University of Alabama Press, $69.95, 1.056 pages) has complete player rosters for every team 1871-1900, an extensive alphabetical roster for every player, manager and umpire in that century.

If you're into that era - or into baseball history - go for that one.

"Hammerin Hank" by Mark Stewart and Mike Kennedy (Lyons Press, $22.95, 252 pages) is subtitled "How the Media made Henry Aaron" and the tome is a very interesting read as it attempts to answer the question - who was Hank Aaron? - a sleepy slugger a Civil Rights activist or the sports hero of the 1970s packaged and primed to be consumed by the public?

Stewart and Kennedy have the right stuff here.
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Harvey Frommer is now in his 32nd consecutive year of writing sports books. He is the author of 38 sports books, including the classics: "New York City Baseball," "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," "Rickey and Robinson," "A Yankee Century," and Red Sox Vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry" (with Frederic J. Frommer).

His newest efforts are OLD TIME BASEBALL and WHERE HAVE ALL THE RED SOX GONE?

He is now at work on the definitive book on the 1927 Yankees to be published in 2007.

**Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.This Article is

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