I am bumping this old thread for the great reading list, to which I will add a few titles:
Tom Boswell - two books: How Time Begins on Opening Day, and How Life Imitates the World Series. One of these, I think the second, has the amazing piece "99 reasons baseball is better than football" though that particular piece you can find online in a Google Search.
And the amazing "Bullpen Gospels" by Dirk Hayhurst, a book so good that I have a bunch of Italians reading it who don't know much about baseball, or did not until recently, and can't put it down.
One more book, not about baseball but about the role of organized sports in the modern world, in democracy and in life, by the single most influential political thinker on my own life: C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary - which is about cricket, but everything he says about it applies equally to baseball. If you don't have the patience to get through the whole thing because of the cricket references (though you can understand everything even if, like me, you understand zero about the game of cricket), read the two chapters entitled "What do Men Live By" and "What is Art" and you have the basic point.
Oh, one last point. See the great reading list by thunder1008 on page 1 of this thread. Then see the last title on his list. Then note the four letters missing from the subtitle of the last book on that list, the one about Koufax. Those same four letters have been expunged from every forum post after 2008 up to a certain date - I am only up to 2010 in my re-reading so far. Your explanation for it ?