Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups: A Complete Guide to the Best, Worst, and Most Memorable Players to Ever Grace the Major Leagues [Paperback]

Neyer gives a lot of credit where credit is due. His "iron glove" teams are at times a hoot. Neyer mentions the infamous Johnie LeMaster of the Giants at shortstop on their "iron glove" team, Jose Offerman his counterpart for the Dodgers, Eddie Matthews at first base for the 1967 Astros, and so on. His all-rookie teams include notables like Mark McGwire for the '87 A's (well doh) and Stan Musial for the 1942 Cardinals. For some long-time teams, he lists 2 greatest lineups. At the end of the book is a section that features each team and its starting lineup from year to year, along with their manager.

Any fan, whether they be casual followers or students of the game are going to love this book! It's a good one.

Lineups basically goes through the major leagues team by team. We're given an all-time lineup for each team as well as best homegrown players, gold gloves, iron gloves, all-bust, all-name and used-to-be-great -- which catalogues what great players eeked out their declining years on a certain club. This is accompanied by little essays in the margins detailing certain selections and a short essay for each team addressing some topic. The essays are actually pretty good, sort of like little columns that you might have missed on his espn gig.

Neyer has put together a rather unique look at the game. Most books of this type look at the best players of all time from all of baseball, but Neyer's book focuses on *teams* and gives you a sense of the ebb and flow of each team's history. You'll see how all thre greatest players in Royals history bunched up in the late 70's and early 80's, how Atlanta's best players all came in the 90's. The traded away section will detail eras of stupid management for each team. And in the back, you get year to year lineups.

I can't think of any other book that does this. Most books focus on the history of one team (usually the Yankees) or one great year (Yankees again, '27 or '98). But this book will give you your first real sense of the history of other organizations like the Expoes and Brewers and so forth -- teams I didn't know HAD a history before I read this.

It's not as big, bad and beautiful as the Historical abstracts but this is a book you'll find yourself leafing through frequently. Definitely worth buying.

I enjoyed the appendix as much as any other part of the book. It showed the typical starting lineups for each team in every different year of their existence. It was interesting to see how stable the lineups were before free agency.

It is truly a book of lists, with little esle. If you have been a baseball fan for decades, you will enjoy a wonderful trip down memory lane. If you are a casual fan who has an interest in one or two teams, it may not be worth it.

I did not feel that the sidebars added that much to the book. They were too short to have the depth of information/analysis that I have come to enjoy in Rob's columns on ESPN.com.

That being said, I enjoyed the book and will keep it and refer back to it for years to come.