The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book – Brendan C. Boyd & Fred C. Harris

“The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book is a book written by Brendan C. Boyd & Fred C. Harris about baseball cards, primarily ones issued during the 1950s and 1960s, and the players on the cards. … Neither Brendan C. Boyd nor Fred C. Harris had published any books nor possessed any special expertise in the field of sports or sports memorabilia when they decided to write The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book. In 1970 while both were employed at a Boston, Mass. bookstore, a customer inquired about books on baseball cards. Surprised to learn that there weren’t any works on the subject, Harris told Boyd, ‘we should write one.’ So they pored over the cards they had collected in their youth and wrote The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book. Although the book doesn’t indicate which author contributed which parts, generally Boyd covered players from the American League and Harris those in the National League. … The book is not written in a linear fashion. Each card and its accompanying commentary, with a few rare exceptions, stand alone and are not categorized, such as by team, league, era, position, etc. The ultimate effect of the seemingly scattershot arrangement is that the reader can start most anywhere and jump about without any loss of comprehension. That said, there are unstated themes that run through the book, or they could be described as threads that hold the story together. … Much of the book’s humor and thus its appeal derives from the authors’ style, which is integral to the narration. Although there are notable exceptions, for the most part the overt writing style could be characterized as breezy, goofy, and irreverent, at times to the point of being ridiculing. Somewhat curiously though, perhaps because of the reader’s awareness of the authors’ respect for the game and the inherent difficulty of playing it at the major league level, the ultimate effect is to glorify the effort made by the humdrum player because he was part of game that was a significant part of one’s youth. …”
Wikipedia
NY Times: The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book (Oct. 1973)
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