I came across a beautiful pristine copy of this book, and thought I’d write it up. It came out
The Hidden Language of Baseball is a small history of signs. And that’s it. If you liked the sign-stealing chapter in my book, you should enjoy Dickson’s work. It traces the start of signs (Chapter 1 is “From Signal Flags and Torches on the Battlefield to the Early Game”) and the increasing complexity of both signs and sign-stealing through baseball’s history.
It’s great – like every chapter, I feel like I left so much on the table when I wrote the chapter on sign stealing, and reading Hidden Language is almost relaxing for me, because I think “ahhh, that’s covered.” There’s a great bit on how Connie Mack was suspected of stealing signs in the 1911 World Series by having his hunchbacked mascot and batboy Louis Van Zelst, who supposedly could see the catcher’s signs by being “being near the ground, on account of his short stature”.
The whole book’s like that, with a chapter on what to watch for during a game, and a sweet appendix with glossary. It’s small-format, pretty quick reading, and if you’re into signs, you’ll probably enjoy it a lot.
Amazon link:
