Three Men on Third

Book excerpt: These two volumes are national treasures. Originally published in 1949 and 1951 respectively, they are pure baseball delight, and they preserve something extraordinary of the American century. They are full of odd ballfield incidents, eccentric characters, and unforgettable lore, all told in the irresistible blithe style of H. Allen Smith, the great funny man. Ira Smith (no relation) spent his life burrowing through archives at the Library of Congress to find tiny items in small-town papers, sublime little baseball stories that would have been lost to the sands of time. And H. Allen Smith took the piles of clippings and notes and wrote these humorous vignettes.