When I was a kid I used to read this book over and over again. I couldn’t get enough of it. In fact, I still remember a number of the stories in this book today. Even though it’s clearly a book that was written for the young American boy market, I think these stories are universally hilarious and interesting. So, I thought it would be a good idea to share them with you. You may think otherwise, but too bad–I’m doing this anyway.

I’ll do my best to post these stories, in their entirety, on a regular basis. I don’t know really anything about Howard Liss, other than he was clearly a huge sports fan who loved weird stories. There’s not even a Wikipedia article about the guy, so I don’t know if he’s even still alive. The “about the author” page in the back of this particular book states that he also wrote Broadway musicals, comic strips and books for adults–but I don’t know of any.

In addition to the stories, there are excellent illustrations by Joe Mathieu who it seems is quite the prolific illustrator for children’s books including books for Sesame Street, Dr. Seuss, and a book of his own called “Big Joe’s Trailer Truck” among many others. He even has a website: https://joemathieu.com/ I think of the illustrations when I remember this book, as much as the stories themselves. In addition to posting the stories here, I’ll also include some of the illustrations so you can get some of the flavor.

If I’m able to find other sources for these stories, whether from YouTube, Wikipedia, or other places, I’ll also include links at the bottom in case anyone wants more context.

Anyway, that’s enough intro. The first story in the book is about Bad Hop Grounders.

A ground ball that takes a bad hop is an infielder’s nightmare. Sometimes it can lose a ball game. Once in a while it can even injure the unlucky fielder. In the 1960 World Series, Tony Kubek of the New York Yankees was hit in the throat by a bad-hop grounder. An important run scored and Kubek had to leave the game.

But bad-hop grounders aren’t always so serious. In September 1968 the Boston Red Sox were at bat against the Philadelphia Athletics. They had Ted Williams on third and Billy Goodman at bat. Goodman hit a sharp, twisting grounder toward Philadelphia shortstop Eddie Joost.

Joost got in front of the ball, but he couldn’t handle it. It hit his glove, ran up his arm and disappeared into the sleeve of his shirt. Joost dropped his glove and began to search all over for the ball. It was under his shirt!

He started to unbutton the shirt, but that was too slow. Finally he pulled his shirttail out of his pants. The ball dropped out and rolled away.

Goodman reached first and then stood on the bag, grinning. Williams, who could have scored easily, was still standing on third base, laughing too hard to run.