As perhaps the only Commissioner of Major League Baseball who could be arguably more notable for his time outside of that position than in it, this slim volume from the late Bart Giamatti is best described by its subtitle (“Americans and Their Games”). While it has a cover picture of Fenway Park, its Green Monster clad in an American flag, the game is truly about American culture and leisure that only weaves in baseball periodically. As Giamatti was an exceptionally well-read writer, his readers must expect frequent literary and historical references that support his analysis of American life and its pastimes.
After reading this book, the reader should more readily understand Giamatti’s time in baseball and his actions relating to Pete Rose. For Giamatti, baseball was more than baseball, it was about America and its people their culture. And in this book, baseball provides him with a backdrop for analyzing the culture’s approach to leisure. And thus, the book will appeal to the more literary-minded of baseball readers.
As such, this is a book best read slowly, with time allotted to savor the prose and to seek out exceptional passages such as this one: “Home is a concept, not a place; it is a state of mind where self-definition starts; it is origins — the mix of time and place and spell and weather wherein one first realizes one is an original, perhaps like others, especially those one loves, but discrete, distinct, not to be copied”
(Full disclosure: I received a review copy via the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.) Reviewer: Ricksbooks