For decades, the closest fans could get to big league action during the long winters was sitting around the hot stove in general stores and barber shops, exchanging bits of baseball legend and lore. The Hot Stove League is a collection of wonderful baseball stories--some hilariously eccentric, others compellingly morbid.

Several stories in The Hot Stove League explore what happens to players who slip through the cracks of the game's memory, and how they cope with life after baseball. Another section takes a look at the legacy of hard drinking and gluttony left by some of the game's early players, including Babe Ruth's often frightening ability to consume food. This collection reveals the origins of some of baseball's most mystifying terminology and tells the story of the first electrically illuminated night game . . . played in 1880.

Lee Allen was a weekly columnist for The Sporting News and the Historian at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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