In Good Wood, New York Times contributor Stuart Miller takes readers on a journey through the rich and storied and occasionally nefarious story of the baseball bat and those who have made them and swung them. With over 50 photos, he reveals the creation, history, and development of the bat, brings readers up to date on modern methods and materials for making bats, and explores the folklore surrounding bats. Spring training begins in a little more than two months, and we here at The Score are already looking forward to that late winter day when we march over to Prospect Park and swing a bat for the first time after a long hiatus. As Babe Ruth once said, "There's nothing that feels as sweet as a good, solid smash." Brooklyn author Stuart Miller knows this, too, and that's why he wrote "Good Wood: The Story of the Baseball Bat." As Miller notes in his introduction, baseball is just a game of catch if you don't have a bat. The 220-page love letter to America's most famous sporting goods icon includes cool chapters on the history and development of the baseball bat and notorious bats of baseball history. Our favorite chapter is entitled "Some Real Corkers," a look at how Pete Rose, George Brett, Howard Johnson and other major league stars altered their bats to gain an edge on pitchers. We also liked Miller's roundup of baseball bats in popular culture. Any book that can make the leap from Hank Aaron and Johnny Mize to the movies "The Warriors" and "Escape from New York" belongs on our must-read list. "Good Wood" is available on Amazon, or through the publisher's website, ActaSports.com. --New York Daily News Stuart Miller is the author of The 100 Greatest Days in New York Sports and co-author of The Other Islands of New York City. He has written about baseball for the New York Times, ESPN: The Magazine, and many other publications. He also coached each of his two sons' baseball teams to 2011 championships in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.