Books in Brief

The Great All-Time Baseball Record Book, by Joseph L. Reichler (Macmillan, 544 pp., $19.95). And so it is. “This book boasts a thoroughness unparalleled in the annals of record books,” writes the author without a blush. “Casey Stengel always said, ‘You could look it up.’ Now you know where.” This, record book of all record books, is indispensable but should be sold with a precautionary label, that it could take up hours . . . days . . . weeks . . . years. Covering more than a hundred seasons, compiled over fifty years by the editor of the Baseball Encyclopedia (who, not surprisingly, is also a member of the Baseball Records Committee), this book represents an accumulation of knowledge so vast, so mammoth, so spectacular, and in details so infinitesimal that it would take ten thousand Phil Rizzutos ten thousand years to praise it adequately. And in the end it would all come down to the old Scooter’s “Holy cow!” anyway. There is something here for everyone. For the mighty, Lou Gehrig’s high career grand-slam total: 23. For the frustrated, Sparky Adams, who, from 1926 through 1928, played in 435 games, went to bat 1,810 times, and managed to hit no home runs. For the lion-hearted, Walter Johnson’s 3,508 career strikeouts. For the melancholic, the 1962 New York Mets, who won forty games and lost 120. For the brotherly, Paul and Lloyd Waner, whose .325 batting average leads the “Best-Hitting Brothers” column. And so on. Best-Hitting Pitchers, Worst-Hitting Pitchers, Most-Lopsided Wins, Forfeited Games, Best Stolen-Base Duos, 475 records in all. All facts, no factoids, but every year the thing will have to be revised for accuracy. Holy cow! joe mysak

The Devil’s DP Dictionary, by Stan Kelly-Bootle (McGraw-Hill, 141 pp., $7.50). Despite the author’s warning, at the beginning of The Devil’s [Data-Processing] Dictionary, that “The meaning of an entry should always be ascertained before consulting this dictionary,” anyone who has had the least b it (or byte) of acqua instance with computers will probably know enough to be quickly rendered incapable with laughter. For there is a style of humor here for every mood ; it rarges from the merely mordant (“worst-case design n. The one delivered”), to the Flanders-and-Swannian (“The word [bug] implies that ‘things go wrong’ because of some infection from outside. The gremlin which caused allmalfunctions during World War II was an openly fictitious mp, blamed in jest ; the DP bug, however, has assumed the unfunny proportions of an infestation. Putting things right, or debugging, therefore, raquires the equivalent of funigation, chlorination, swabbing, or, to use the proper chemotherapeutic terminology, ‘nailing the little bastards’ ”), to the radiantly macabre (“cursor n. . . . A faintly flickering symbol on a CRT screen, used to test the eyesight and reflexes of the operator, and indicating where the next keyed character will be rejected … A cursor in the top left-hand position of an otherwise blank screen serves to indicate that the stystem (with the except bn of the cursor-generation module) is inoperative. . . . The record for loyal patience belongs to the late M. Thumps, whose atrophied corpse was discovered slumped over a ranoteterminal of the British Rail TRAIN (Train Recovery and Identification Network) complex two years after his particular line had been closed. The postmortem, perfomed by Terminal Diseases Inc., proudly revealed that the cursor was still flashing, a fact subsequently exploited in the manufacturer’s gruesomely effective advertising campaign. . . .”). When national review’s computer typesetters were shown this book, they blinked greenly and kept silent ; but they know—they knew.

JM

About the Author

Joe Mysak

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

SR

About the Author

Selden Rodman

JA

About the Author

John A. Barnes

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The Great All-Time Baseball Record Book, by Joseph L. Reichler (Macmillan, 544 pp., $19.95). And so it is. “This book boasts a thoroughness unparalleled in the annals of record books,” writes the author without a blush. “Casey Stengel always said, ‘You could look it up.’ Now you know where.” This, record book of all record books, is indispensable but should be sold with a precautionary label, that it could take up hours . . . days . . . weeks . . . years. Covering more than a hundred seasons, compiled over fifty years by the editor of the Baseball Encyclopedia (who, not surprisingly, is also a member of the Baseball Records Committee), this book represents an accumulation of knowledge so vast, so mammoth, so spectacular, and in details so infinitesimal that it would take ten thousand Phil Rizzutos ten thousand years to praise it adequately. And in the end it would all come down to the old Scooter’s “Holy cow!” anyway. There is something here for everyone. For the mighty, Lou Gehrig’s high career grand-slam total: 23. For the frustrated, Sparky Adams, who, from 1926 through 1928, played in 435 games, went to bat 1,810 times, and managed to hit no home runs. For the lion-hearted, Walter Johnson’s 3,508 career strikeouts. For the melancholic, the 1962 New York Mets, who won forty games and lost 120. For the brotherly, Paul and Lloyd Waner, whose .325 batting average leads the “Best-Hitting Brothers” column. And so on. Best-Hitting Pitchers, Worst-Hitting Pitchers, Most-Lopsided Wins, Forfeited Games, Best Stolen-Base Duos, 475 records in all. All facts, no factoids, but every year the thing will have to be revised for accuracy. Holy cow! joe mysak

The Devil’s DP Dictionary, by Stan Kelly-Bootle (McGraw-Hill, 141 pp., $7.50). Despite the author’s warning, at the beginning of The Devil’s [Data-Processing] Dictionary, that “The meaning of an entry should always be ascertained before consulting this dictionary,” anyone who has had the least b it (or byte) of acqua instance with computers will probably know enough to be quickly rendered incapable with laughter. For there is a style of humor here for every mood ; it rarges from the merely mordant (“worst-case design n. The one delivered”), to the Flanders-and-Swannian (“The word [bug] implies that ‘things go wrong’ because of some infection from outside. The gremlin which caused allmalfunctions during World War II was an openly fictitious mp, blamed in jest ; the DP bug, however, has assumed the unfunny proportions of an infestation. Putting things right, or debugging, therefore, raquires the equivalent of funigation, chlorination, swabbing, or, to use the proper chemotherapeutic terminology, ‘nailing the little bastards’ ”), to the radiantly macabre (“cursor n. . . . A faintly flickering symbol on a CRT screen, used to test the eyesight and reflexes of the operator, and indicating where the next keyed character will be rejected … A cursor in the top left-hand position of an otherwise blank screen serves to indicate that the stystem (with the except bn of the cursor-generation module) is inoperative. . . . The record for loyal patience belongs to the late M. Thumps, whose atrophied corpse was discovered slumped over a ranoteterminal of the British Rail TRAIN (Train Recovery and Identification Network) complex two years after his particular line had been closed. The postmortem, perfomed by Terminal Diseases Inc., proudly revealed that the cursor was still flashing, a fact subsequently exploited in the manufacturer’s gruesomely effective advertising campaign. . . .”). When national review’s computer typesetters were shown this book, they blinked greenly and kept silent ; but they know—they knew.