Casey Award
The Casey Award is an annual literary award that has been given to the best baseball book of the year since 1983. The award was created by Mike Shannon and W. J. Harrison, editors and co-founders of Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine because, up until then, there was no award given to authors and publishers of distinguished baseball literature; it is considered to be the most prestigious award that can be given to a baseball book.
Award process
Baseball books, both non-fiction and fiction, are nominated by a panel of three judges under five main criteria: literary quality, informational content, analytical content, originality, and artistic appeal. After a shortlist is finalized, the judges vote on the book which has given "the greatest contribution to baseball literature". It is then presented at the annual CASEY Award Banquet held in Cincinnati, Ohio in January.Previously, the winner received a bronze plaque which manufactured by the Newman Brothers Company in Cincinnati and featured Nap Lajoie holding a quill, the original logo of the award which was designed by magazine's first art director, Blair Gibeau. In 2009, the bronze plaques were replaced by authentic Louisville Slugger baseball bats imprinted with a new CASEY Award logo designed by the magazine's second art director and longtime cover artist Donnie Pollard.
Winners and finalists
1980s
Source:| Year | Author | Book | Result |
| 1983 | Eric Rolfe Greenberg | The Celebrant | Winner |
| 1983 | Jules Tygiel | Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy | Finalist |
| 1983 | Harry Stein | Hoopla | Finalist |
| 1983 | Donn Rogosin | Invisible Men: Life in Baseball's Negro Leagues | Finalist |
| 1983 | L. Robert Davids | Insider's Baseball: The Finer Points of the Game, as Examined by the Society for American Baseball Research | Finalist |
| 1983 | Lowell Reidenbaugh | Take Me Out to the Ballpark | Finalist |
| 1983 | Richard Lindberg | Who's on 3rd? The Chicago White Sox Story | Finalist |
| 1984 | Peter Golenbock | Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers | Winner |
| 1984 | Walter Iooss & Roger Angell | Baseball | Finalist |
| 1984 | Kevin Kerrane | Dollar Sign on the Muscle | Finalist |
| 1984 | Eugene C. Murdock | Might Casey: All American | Finalist |
| 1984 | Robert Creamer | Casey Stengel: His Life and Times | Finalist |
| 1984 | Charles Alexander | Ty Cobb | Finalist |
| 1985 | Roger Kahn | Good Enough to Dream | Winner |
| 1985 | John Thorn | The Armchair Book of Baseball | Finalist |
| 1985 | Don Olson | Bambi's Bombers: The First Time Around | Finalist |
| 1985 | Daniel Okrent | Nine Innings: The Anatomy of Baseball as Seen Through the Playing of a Single Game | Finalist |
| 1985 | Dave Masterson & Timm Boyle | Baseball's Best: The MVPs | Finalist |
| 1985 | Donald Hall | Fathers Playing Catch with Sons | Finalist |
| 1985 | Donald Honig | Baseball America: The Heroes of the Game and the Times of Their Glory | Finalist |
| 1985 | W. P. Kinsella | The Thrill of the Grass | Finalist |
| 1985 | - | Topps Baseball Cards | Finalist |
| 1986 | Bill James | The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract | Winner |
| 1986 | Myron J. Smith, Jr. | Baseball: A Comprehensive Bibliography | Finalist |
| 1986 | Terry Pluto & Jeffrey Neuman | A Baseball Winter: The Off-Season Life of the Summer Game | Finalist |
| 1986 | Tony Ardizzone | Heart of the Order | Finalist |
| 1986 | W. P. Kinsella | The Iowa Baseball Confederacy | Finalist |
| 1986 | Jack B. Moore | Joe DiMaggio: A Bio-Bibliography | Finalist |
| 1986 | Roger Kahn | Joe & Marilyn: A Memory of Love | Finalist |
| 1986 | David Falkner | The Short Season: The Hard Work and High Times of Baseball in the Spring | Finalist |
| 1987 | Peter H. Gordon | Diamonds Are Forever: Artists and Writers on Baseball | Winner |
| 1987 | Bowie Kuhn & Marty Appel | Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner | Finalist |
| 1987 | George Plimpton | The Curious Case of Sidd Finch | Finalist |
| 1987 | John Thorn & John Holway | The Pitcher | Finalist |
| 1987 | David Q. Voigt | Baseball: An Illustrated History | Finalist |
| 1987 | Charles Einstein | The Fireside Book of Baseball, Vol. 4 | Finalist |
| 1987 | Tony Kubek & Terry Pluto | Sixty-One: The Team, The Record, The Men | Finalist |
| 1987 | Neil Sullivan | The Dodgers Move West | Finalist |
| 1987 | Joe Coomer | A Flatland Fable | Finalist |
| 1987 | Curt Smith | Voices of the Game: The First Full-Scale Overview of Baseball Broadcasting, 1921 to the Present | Finalist |
| 1988 | John Holway | Blackball Stars: Negro League Pioneers | Winner |
| 1988 | Roger Angell | Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion | Finalist |
| 1988 | Lonnie Wheeler | Bleachers: A Summer in Wrigley Field | Finalist |
| 1988 | Charles Alexander | John McGraw | Finalist |
| 1988 | Dorothy Ruth | My Dad, the Babe | Finalist |
| 1988 | W. P. Kinsella | The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt | Finalist |
| 1988 | Noel Hynd | The Giants of the Polo Grounds | Finalist |
| 1988 | Lonnie Wheeler & John Baskin | The Cincinnati Game | Finalist |
| 1988 | Gerald Astor | The Baseball Hall of Fame 50th Anniversary Book | Finalist |
| 1988 | Dave Winfield & Tom Parker | Winfield: A Player's Life | Finalist |
| 1989 | Mike Sowell | The Pitch That Killed: Carl Mays, Ray Chapman and the Pennant Race of 1920 | Winner |
| 1989 | Lawrence Ritter & Mark Rucker | The Babe: A Life in Pictures | Finalist |
| 1989 | Mike Bryan | Baseball Lives: Men and Women of the Game Talk About Their Jobs, Their Lives, and the National Pastime | Finalist |
| 1989 | Joel Zoss & John Bowman | Diamonds in the Rough: The Untold History of Baseball | Finalist |
| 1989 | Paul Dickson | The Dickson Baseball Dictionary | Finalist |
| 1989 | John Krich | El Beisbol | Finalist |
| 1989 | Hank Greenberg & Ira Berkow | Hank Greenberg: The Story of My Life | Finalist |
| 1989 | Thomas Boswell | The Heart of the Order | Finalist |
| 1989 | Robert Whiting | You Gotta Have Wa | Finalist |
| 1989 | John Thorn | Total Baseball | Finalist |
1990s
Source:| Year | Author | Book | Result |
| 1990 | Dorothy Seymour Mills & Harold Seymour | Baseball: The People's Game | Winner |
| 1990 | Shelly M. Dinhofer | The Art of Baseball: America's Game in Painting, Folk Art and Photography | Finalist |
| 1990 | Mike Shatzkin | The Ballplayers: Baseball's Ultimate Biographical Reference | Finalist |
| 1990 | James E. Miller | The Baseball Business: Pursuing Pennants and Profits in Baltimore | Finalist |
| 1990 | William Curran | Big Sticks: The Batting Revolution of the Twenties | Finalist |
| 1990 | Michael Sokolove | Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose | Finalist |
| 1990 | Darryl Brock | If I Never Get Back | Finalist |
| 1990 | George Will | Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball | Finalist |
| 1990 | Mark Winegardner | Prophet of the Sandlots: Journeys With A Major League Scout | Finalist |
| 1991 | Bruce Kuklick | To Everything a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia, 1909-1976 | Winner |
| 1991 | Andy McCue | Baseball by the Books | Finalist |
| 1991 | Henry Aaron & Lonnie Wheeler | I Had A Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story | Finalist |
| 1991 | Marc Okkonen | Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century | Finalist |
| 1991 | Brendan Boyd | Blue Ruin: A Novel of the 1919 World Series | Finalist |
| 1991 | Jerry Lansche | Glory Fades Away: The Nineteenth-Century World Series Remembered | Finalist |
| 1991 | David Lamb | Stolen Season: A Journey Through America and Baseball's Minor Leagues | Finalist |
| 1991 | Dick Johnson & Glenn Stout | Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures | Finalist |
| 1991 | - | Tales of the Diamond: Gems of Baseball Fiction | Finalist |
| 1991 | - | Nolan Ryan: The Authorized Pictorial History | Finalist |
| 1992 | Phil S. Dixon & Patrick J. Hannigan | The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History | Winner |
| 1992 | Bruce Chadwick | When the Game Was Black & White: The Illustrated Story of Baseball's Negro Leagues | Finalist |
| 1992 | David James Duncan | The Brothers K | Finalist |
| 1992 | Robert Gregory | Diz: The Story of Dizzy Dean and Baseball During the Great Depression | Finalist |
| 1992 | Peter Golenbock | Fenway: An Unexpurgated History of the Boston Red Sox: | Finalist |
| 1992 | Lois Browne | The Girls of Summer: In Their Own League | Finalist |
| 1992 | Lawrence Ritter | Lost Ballparks: A Celebration of Baseball's Legendary Fields | Finalist |
| 1992 | Hal Erickson | Baseball in the Movies: A Comprehensive Reference, 1915-1991 | Finalist |
| 1992 | Mike Betzold & Ethan Casey | Queen of Diamonds: The Tiger Stadium Story | Finalist |
| 1992 | Luke Salisbury | The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday | Finalist |
| 1993 | Michael Gershman | Diamonds: the Evolution of the Ballpark | Winner |
| 1993 | Neal & Constance McCabe | Baseball's Golden Age: The Photos of Charles M. Conlon | Finalist |
| 1993 | Ed Linn | Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams | Finalist |
| 1993 | Barbara Gregorich | Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball | Finalist |
| 1993 | Lloyd Johnson | The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball | Finalist |
| 1993 | Wilfred Sheed | My Life as a Fan: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 1993 | Donald Hall | The Museum of Clear Ideas | Finalist |
| 1993 | Gerald Eskenazi | The Lip: A Biography of Leo Durocher | Finalist |
| 1993 | Bob Edwards | Fridays with Red: A Radio Friendship | Finalist |
| 1993 | Rich Westcott & Frank Bilovsky | The New Phillies Encyclopedia | Finalist |
| 1994 | John Helyar | Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball | Winner |
| 1994 | Bill James | The Politics of Glory: How Baseball's Hall of Fame Really Works | Finalist |
| 1994 | David Halberstam | October 1964 | Finalist |
| 1994 | Randall A. Hendricks | Inside the Strike Zone | Finalist |
| 1994 | Daniel Coyle | Hardball: A Season in the Projects | Finalist |
| 1994 | Al Stump | Cobb: The Life and Times of the Meanest Man Who Ever Played Baseball | Finalist |
| 1994 | Nicholas Dawidoff | The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg | Finalist |
| 1994 | Michael Bishop | Brittle Innings | Finalist |
| 1994 | James A. Riley | The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues | Finalist |
| 1994 | Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns | Baseball: An Illustrated History | Finalist |
| 1995 | Henry W. Thomas | Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train | Winner |
| 1995 | Dan Gutman | Banana Bats and Dingdong Balls: A Century of Baseball Inventions | Finalist |
| 1995 | Pete Williams | Card Sharks: How Upper Deck Turned a Child's Hobby into a High-Stakes, Billion-Dollar Business | Finalist |
| 1995 | Jay Rogoff | The Cutoff | Finalist |
| 1995 | Greg Rhodes & John Erardi | Crosley Field: An Illustrated History of a Classic Ballpark | Finalist |
| 1995 | W.P. Kinsella | The Dixon Cornbelt League and Other Baseball Stories | Finalist |
| 1995 | Jack Torry | Endless Summers: The Fall and Rise of the Cleveland Indians | Finalist |
| 1995 | David Zang | Fleet Walker's Divided Heart | Finalist |
| 1995 | David Falkner | Great Time Coming: The Life of Jackie Robinson | Finalist |
| 1995 | Charles Alexander | Rogers Hornsby: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1995 | Richard Panek | Waterloo Diamonds: A Midwestern Town and Its Minor League Team | Finalist |
| 1995 | Stefan Fatsis | Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland | Finalist |
| 1996 | Marty Appel | Slide, Kelly, Slide: The Wild Life and Times of Mike "King" Kelly, Baseball's First Superstar | Winner |
| 1996 | Dan Shaughnessy | At Fenway: Dispatches from Red Sox Nation | Finalist |
| 1996 | Richard Cahan & Mark Jacob | The Game that Was: The George Brace Baseball Photo Collection | Finalist |
| 1996 | Rachel Robinson & Lee Daniels | Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait | Finalist |
| 1996 | David Cataneo | Tony C.: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tony Conigliaro | Finalist |
| 1996 | Mike Shropshire | Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and "The Worst Baseball Team in History" ― The 1973–1975 Texas Rangers | Finalist |
| 1996 | Mark Winegardner | The Veracruz Blues | Finalist |
| 1996 | Peter Golenbock | Wrigleyville: A Magical History Tour of the Chicago Cubs | Finalist |
| 1997 | Thomas Dyja | Play for a Kingdom | Winner |
| 1997 | Arnold Rampersad | Jackie Robinson: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1997 | Alan Klein | Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos | Finalist |
| 1997 | David Nemec | The Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball | Finalist |
| 1997 | Roger Kahn | Memories of Summer | Finalist |
| 1997 | Joseph J. Dittmar | Baseball Records Registry | Finalist |
| 1997 | David Pietrusza | Lights On! The Wild Century-Long Saga of Night Baseball | Finalist |
| 1997 | Greg Rhodes & John Erardi | Big Red Dynasty: How Bob Howsam & Sparky Anderson Built the Big Red Machine | Finalist |
| 1997 | Joseph A. Reaves | Warsaw to Wrigley: A Foreign Correspondent's Tale of Coming Home from Communism to the Cubs | Finalist |
| 1997 | Paul Dickson | The Joy of Keeping Score: How Scoring the Game Has Influenced and Enhanced the History of Baseball | Finalist |
| 1998 | David Pietrusza | Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis | Winner |
| 1998 | Dave Rosenbaum | If They Don't Win It's a Shame: The Year the Marlins Bought the World Series | Finalist |
| 1998 | Frank Dolson | Jim Bunning: Baseball and Beyond | Finalist |
| 1998 | Larry Canale | Mickey Mantle: The Yankee Years: The Classic Photography of Ozzie Sweet | Finalist |
| 1998 | John Thorn | Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame | Finalist |
| 1998 | Richard Bak | A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium | Finalist |
| 1998 | Rodney Torreson | The Ripening of Pinstripes | Finalist |
| 1998 | Samuel O. Regalado | Viva Baseball: Latin Major Leaguers and Their Special Hunger | Finalist |
| 1998 | William J. Ryczek | When Johnny Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870 | Finalist |
| 1998 | Ray Robinson & Christopher Jennison | Yankee Stadium: 75 Years of Drama, Glamor, and Glory | Finalist |
| 1999 | Neal Karlen | Slouching Toward Fargo: A Two-Year Saga of Sinners and St. Paul Saints at the Bottom of the Bush Leagues with Bill Murray, Darryl Strawberry, Dakota Sadie, and Me | Winner |
| 1999 | Bruce Adelson | Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South | Finalist |
| 1999 | Bryan Di Salvatore | A Clever Base-Ballist: The Life and Times of John Montgomery Ward | Finalist |
| 1999 | William Marshall | Baseball's Pivotal Era, 1945-1951 | Finalist |
| 1999 | Terry Pluto | Our Tribe: A Baseball Memoir | Finalist |
| 1999 | Robert Reed | A Six-Gun Salute: An Illustrated History of the Houston Colt.45s | Finalist |
| 1999 | Mark Rucker & Peter Bjarkman | Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball | Finalist |
| 1999 | Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria | The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball | Finalist |
| 1999 | Hobe Hays | Take Two and Hit to Right: Golden Days on the Semi-Pro Diamond | Finalist |
| 1999 | Dean Chadwin | Those Damn Yankees: The Secret Life of America's Greatest Franchise | Finalist |
| 1999 | Burt Solomon | Where They Ain't: The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team That Gave Birth to Modern Baseball | Finalist |