Summer’s here and with the season comes America’s pastime and the boys of summer.  This is also the period when many paranormal sleuths amp up their ghost hunting.  Mickey Bradley and Dan Gordon provide a surprising but solid pairing of both subjects in Haunted Baseball: Ghosts, Curses, Legends, and Eerie Events.

Anyone who is a baseball fan knows of the billy goat curse that tavern owner William Sianis bestowed upon the Chicago Cubs when he and his unusual pet were kicked out of Wrigley Field during a 1945 World Series game.  Sianis declared the Cubs would never win again.  Never is a long time, but so is 71 years, which is how long it took the Cubs to win the 2016 World Series.

If the book were filled with only familiar stories, it wouldn’t be worth the ride for those of us who love the game and its legends, but there’s much I hadn’t heard about here, such as a Ouija board session that informed Lou Gherig, in fine health and at the top of his game, that he was pretty much finished with baseball.  He began wasting away shortly afterward.

Then there’s Babe Ruth.  Baseball fans have heard that the Bambino’s ghost drops by the Yankees’ spring training camps, but how many know that he also reportedly haunts one of his favorite brothels?

And while many baseball followers have heard that the Angels are allegedly hexed or jinxed, Bradley and Gordon detail stories about the weirdness in the tunnels and rooms within the team’s stadium.  As for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, was the team cursed by its very name?  Interesting that the franchise could get nowhere near the top until they rechristened themselves.  As soon as they jettisoned the “Devil,” the Rays snagged an ALCS title.

Then there are the unsettling tales of some hotels that house the teams, several told by the players and managers themselves; to say nothing of the phantom sounds emanating from empty club houses and Stengel’s ghost dropping by Yankees practices.

Haunted Baseball also chronicles attempts to lift various curses that supposedly plague players and teams.  Those who play the game are a superstitious lot.  Many fans are no different.  On second assessment, maybe this book isn’t comprised of an unlikely confluence of topics.  If you’re a fan of the paranormal, you’ll enjoy the read; if you love baseball, you’ll appreciate it.  If you love both subjects, as I do, it’s a fair bet you’ll consider Haunted Baseball a homerun.

• Oscar De Los Santos

Bradley, Mickey and Dan Gordon.  Haunted Baseball: Ghosts, Curses, Legends, and Eerie

Events.  Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2007.