The Hidden Language of Baseball: How Signs and Sign Stealing Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime

by Paul Dickson

Book Overview

Baseball is set apart from other sports by many things, but few are more distinctive than the intricate systems of coded language that govern action on the field and give baseball its unique appeal.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802713920
• ISBN13: 9780802713926
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Walker Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Awesome Book!

This is a fantastic book for baseball lovers. My son is in high school and just loved it!

A fine chronology of player signals

During any given nine-inning baseball game over a thousand silent instructions are given between players and from umpires to coaches. You've seen the hand signals - now understand their meaning in the first examination of their history, evolution and methods. Baseball games are surveyed past and present to gain a fine chronology of player signals.

Play Ball!

A short but thorough history of baseball as seen through the development of signs, sign stealing and tip-off reading. Includes some delightful photographs, numerous anotations, a lengthy bibliography and index. Paul Dickson's approach to baseball makes me wonder if the recent homerun records aren't more a case for renewed talent in sign stealing / tip-off reading than for new technology for bats or performance inhancing drugs.

A surprising & fascinating look at behind-the-scenes basebal

Forget the simple theory that Bobby Thomson benefitted from a stolen sign when he hit the historic homer off Ralph Branca in 1951. Dickson gives us the real story--a much more colorful and fascinating peek at baseball's most memorable moment. That's just one of many new and interesting facts and anecdotes in this first-of-its kind book. I've written baseball books myself and I tip my hat to this one.

Everything you should know about what you thought you knew

Paul Dickson has done it again! Here's a book that all baseball fans will love, even those modest folk who know everything there is to know about the game. "The Hidden Language of Baseball" is the book to read -- after you make it a most valuable gift to your kids, who have often asked you (as if you knew) what those goofy and not-so goofy signs mean, who dreamed them up and how come the other team doesn't steal them, which, of course, they try their darndest to do. Paul Dickson takes the reader through baseball sign language from its very earliest recorded years to the wild and wooly "Golden Age" of flagrantly outrageous stealing and to today's signing in full view of the ever-improving intrusiveness of high-tech TV lenses. The book is full of wonderful anecdotes - a Dizzy Dean classic will have you roaring with delight. Like "The Dickson Baseball Dictionary", this book is a must for baseball fans of all ages.