Sunday is Opening Day for Major League Baseball, and the sporting world is gearing up to see the boys of summer take the field once more. If you don’t know what “boys of summer” means and can’t fathom why anyone would take a day off to catch the first game of the longest season in professional sports, worry not: Let this list of books, films and activities prepare you for the 2016 season. The baseball universe is vast, but if you’d like to peer inside the mind of your average player – or figure out how to tell them apart – this is a good start.

“Baseball Prospectus”

An annual guide with enough information to make anyone who holds it the head of a major league scouting department, the “Baseball Prospectus” offers bios, common stats and advanced stats, plus super-advanced stats such as VORP, park-adjusted offensive factors and expected run matrices. Commentators use it. Scouts use it. Fantasy-sports pros use it. It’s called the “essential guide” for a reason.

“Ball Four,” Jim Bouton

Bouton’s MLB career was unremarkable, but “Ball Four,” his journal-turned-book about his 1969 season, changed baseball forever. It offered a true behind-the-scenes look at players and their lives, including unflattering details about womanizing, cheating and drug use. (It also revealed that the heroic Mickey Mantle hit home runs while hungover.) The subject matter was so disruptive that baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement declaring that the book was fiction, and Pete Rose began yelling “F— you, Shakespeare!” whenever Bouton took the mound.

R.B.I. Baseball

Computer-based baseball games date back to IBM’s Baseball in 1961.Now a new baseball game comes out every season. But if you’re a child of the ’80s, chances are you played this frustrating 8-bitgem on your Nintendo. The graphics were blah, the soundtrack will drill its way into your brain and never leave, and good luck trying to throw to the correct base without at least a dozen games under your belt. But it was a staple of the era for those who wanted to play the real or digital version of the game; now you can play it in a Web browser.

“Moneyball,” Michael Lewis

For fans, this story of the rise of advanced sabermetrics and the fall of old-school, oft-flawed baseball wisdom – told through the lens of manager Billy Beane and his bare-budget 2002 Oakland A’s – was a fascinating read. For players, it was a game-changer. I’d just been drafted by the San Diego Padres when it came out in 2003, and pitchers were screaming about how they weren’t going to throw 20 percent more change-ups just because some number-crunching nerds said they should, or how “pitch efficiency” was stupid and all that mattered were strikeouts and throwing hard. I didn’t throw hard or strike a lot of people out, so “Moneyball” was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Before the book, I specialized in giving up hits. After, I specialized in “ending-at bats in three pitches or less.”

A pack of Topps baseball cards

The baseball-card trade has cooled from its frenzied heydey, but collecting remains a major part of enjoying the game for many fans, who congregate atop dugouts and at fence lines, hoping to get their cards signed by their favorite players. Topps, the king of cards, started out as a chewing-gum company, and when it began selling cards in 1951, a piece of gum accompanied its packs. Calling the pink styrene covered in powdered sugar that came with a pack of cards “gum” is generous. If you can find an unopened pack in your attic, try the gum. It will make you appreciate how far baseball cards have come.

“The Arm,” Jeff Passan

In recent years, professional baseball has seen epidemic levels of Tommy John surgeries – more properly known as ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction. Baseball has become extremely specialized, and aspiring pitchers have to start throwing early, often and as hard as possible, resulting in the need for serious repairs. “The Arm” masterfully explores this development, the dangers of overuse and the repercussions it has on baseball’s biggest stage.

“Bull Durham”

“Bull Durham” follows the relationship between a veteran catcher, Crash Davis, and an arrogant, infinitely talented young pitcher, Ebby Calvin LaLoosh, who are at opposite ends of their careers in the minors. The movie offers a surprisingly accurate look at baseball and a good amount of wisdom, including when Davis scolds LaLoosh about his shower shoes: “If you win 20 in the show, you can let the fungus grow back and the press’ll think you’re colorful. Until you win 20 in the show, however, it means you are a slob.” Success covers a multitude of sins in baseball, including fungus.

“Opening Day,” Jonathan Eig

Perhaps no moment in baseball history was more significant than Opening Day on April 15, 1954, when Jackie Robinson became the first black man to play in the majors. Robinson had an exemplary career, but his impact on the civil rights movement and black equality will far outlast anything he did on the ballfield. Eig’s excellent recounting of Robinson in “Opening Day” provides an honest look at the man behind the legend.

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Hayhurst is a retired Major League pitcher, the author of “The Bullpen Gospels” and a rescuer of greyhounds.

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