HOT CORNER

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What: “Unhittable!”

Author: Gabriel Schechter

Publisher: Charles April Publications, Los Gatos, Calif.

Price: $19.95

“Unhittable! Baseball’s Greatest Pitching Seasons” tells the story behind the story of 25 of baseball’s most incredible pitching years.

What makes this book unique is that author Gabriel Schechter, in his own words, tells “not so much what these pitchers did as how they did it and how the achievements were regarded at the time.”

Schechter, a New York native and longtime teacher, admits that selecting his own Top 25 was a subjective process. “My dictionary,” he says in the book’s introduction, “contains thirteen definitions of the word great.”

Schechter pays homage not only to the big-statistic seasons--30-game winners, most strikeouts, etc.--but also to lesser-known feats, like pitchers who fought through arm pain and inexperience to lead their team to pennants.

Featured are many all-time greats, such as Cy Young, Walter Johnson and Sandy Koufax. But Schechter also includes such active pitchers as Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson.

A lifelong fan of pitching, Schechter appears to leave nothing out of this 392-page, graphic-filled book. Charts include everything from pitchers’ game-by-game box scores to the players backing them up in the field.

There’s even entertaining biographical information on each pitcher, such as Cy Young’s real name: Denton True Young.

Schechter closes the book with “the best of the rest” and “the best of the pen.”

He is now working on a book of baseball’s greatest hitting seasons.

Steve Rom