Stolen Season: A Journey Through America and Baseball's Minor Leagues

At 14, Lamb wrote a series of stories about the Milwaukee Braves, geographically distant successors to his beloved Boston Braves; the stories appeared in the Milwaukee Journal and helped clinch the author's fascination with baseball. He went on to become a foreign correspondent with the Los Angeles Times and an author ( The Africans ; The Arabs ), and in 1989 decided to tour the nation's 15 minor leagues. This workmanlike book is the result. Lamb concerns himself with the franchises, the owners, stadiums past and present, relations between clubs and the major league teams that subsidize most of them, managers and coaches and, too infrequently, with the players themselves. He is capable of superb writing, as in an eloquent encomium to the Middle West, but does not sustain this level throughout. Photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)