Baseball's Biggest Bloopers

I was starting junior high at the time, and as I went to my sixth period class, I saw a collection of books as I entered. One book stood out to me: Baseball's Biggest Bloopers. I opened it, read it, and repeated...over and over and over again. I still have it, and when I have the time, I read it again. I absolutely loved this book so much.

This was the first book I read that detailed the old days of baseball. Well, mostly. A lot of the blunders mentioned in this book took place in the early years of baseball's modern era, with the most notable one being Fred Merkle's infamous "bonehead" play in the last day of the 1908 season, which cost the New York Giants against the Chicago Cubs, who went on to the pennant and went on to win what would be their last World Series for 108 years.

I actually learned the full details of the Bill Buckner blunder thanks to that book. I also learned about the Curse of the Bambino as well. At the time I read this book for the first time, the curse was 79 years old. I was amazed when I read this book for the first time, and I loved all of those stories--every single one of them. Baseball's Biggest Bloopers vastly increased my baseball fandom; I remember watching that year's World Series in awe because I had known just a bit more about baseball's history.

Speaking of, that's another way that this book truly affected me. It increased my fascination with baseball's history, as well as my fascination with baseball's old postseason formats. Just think, all it took to increase my baseball knowledge was a happenstance moment during sixth period in junior high. That book is the reason why I've since written quite a few stories about baseball's vast history.