The National Pastime

Rating:
Summary: long summer days
Review: It's always difficult to find a book that isn't cloaked in modern day cinicism, and that's why THE NATIONAL PASTIME is one of the most refreshing books I've read in years. If you lazily daydream about your little league days, big league chew, and your first triple, then this will stoke the fires of nostalgia for you as it did for me. What i liked most is that I got the sense that the author is probably not that different from you or I--just a life-long fan who wants to share his passion for the greatest game ever played. The only difference may be the remarkable skill and wit with which he chronicles our nation's pastime. He'll make you want to get a stick ball game gong in the back yard.

Rating:
Summary: long summer days
Review: It's always difficult to find a book that isn't cloaked in modern day cinicism, and that's why THE NATIONAL PASTIME is one of the most refreshing books I've read in years. If you lazily daydream about your little league days, big league chew, and your first triple, then this will stoke the fires of nostalgia for you as it did for me. What i liked most is that I got the sense that the author is probably not that different from you or I--just a life-long fan who wants to share his passion for the greatest game ever played. The only difference may be the remarkable skill and wit with which he chronicles our nation's pastime. He'll make you want to get a stick ball game gong in the back yard.

Rating:
Summary: Classic moments and arguments from baseball history
Review: The articles written by some of the best baseball writers in the country and collected by editor John Thorn represent the best of "The National Pastime," the publication of the Society for American Baseball Research. The result is what I want to think of as more of an academic journal than a collection of sports stories, because "The National Pastime" is never going to put out a swimsuit issue.

Within these pages you will find G. H. Flemin's "Kaleidoscopic View" of the infamous Merkle Blunder, Bill James's statistical analysis of the relief pitcher's ERA advantage, and David S. Neft asking that immortal question: "Is Ozzie Smith Worth $2 Million a Season." This is a book that does not talk about Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle but rather Hack Wilson, Dick Allen and Roger Maris. For culture there are the poems "Van Lingle Mungo: An Elegiac Ode" and "Baseball Rhyme Time." and then for fun a Ballparks Quiz and Acrostic Puzzle. These are articles that want to talk about the almost no-hitters, newly discovered RBI records and expansion-era managers. But there are also stories about the St. Louis Cardinals planning a rebellion rather than playing a baseball game against the Brooklyn Dodgers and Jackie Robinson and Bob Carroll's argument for 12 players who should be in the Hall of Fame, most of whom are still not there.

This is not a sit down and read at one sitting book. This is a spring training book, to get you ready for the season by getting you to think of the first game lost by the Cincinnati Reds in 1870, the importance of on-base percentage, and a ballplayers name to rhyme with Snider. It is also an effective subscription advertisement for "The National Pastime." I have been rereading a couple of articles from this book every spring (okay, when spring training starts since we have snow on the ground up here until well after Easter) for several years. This is not a book to leave unprotected on your must have list.