What’s the best baseball book ever written? If you ask Karl Cicitto, who has roughly 4,000 baseball books in his house, it’s Veeck As in Wreck, Bill Veeck’s uproarious autobiography. Cicitto and his massive book collection are profiled in Steve Rushin’s column in the June 26 issue of Sport’s Illustrated. “The first book Cicitto would save in a fire is his signed early edition of Veeck As in Wreck.”
If you’ve never read this classic of the national pastime, start with our excerpt, an account of the short but memorable career of Eddie Gaedel.