Appalachian League Baseball, Allen LaMountain

Major League baseball recently reorganized many of its relationships with minor league teams, eliminating some and repurposing others. The new version of the Appalachian League will focus on college freshman and sophomores, acquainting them with the version of the game played with wooden bats. Most college and high school players are still using aluminum bats and if they want to make the jump to the Show, they will need to learn the nuances of the different tool.

But as Allen LaMountain outlines in his 2014 history Appalachian League Baseball the teams of this region are used to training young players, serving as the Advanced Rookie circuit since organizing in the 1950s. The teams of "Appy League" have crafted and fed their best to the more advanced levels of play.

Managers as well have moved from working the Appy League to the majors, and LaMountain sketches the league history of a few along with the players. The book is organized into sections, beginning with three- and four-page histories of the current league teams as well as those which have closed over its tenure. The next section works with the managers and then, divided by chronology, we learn what some 90 players accomplished while playing for their different Appy League teams.

LaMountain has been a sports writer for a Tennessee newspaper and operates with an extensive knowledge of the league and its teams. That experience also colors his writing; the different entries are straightforward short summaries of wins, losses, statistics and such. Appalachian League reads as much like an encyclopedia or reference work as anything else; different players, managers and teams might have some color in their stories but any such daubs are small and scattered. The thoroughness of the research and completeness of the detail mean serious baseball historians problably need a copy of Appalachian League on their shelves, but it's sometimes a little dry for the average fan or follower in any but medium-sized doses.