The Game: One Man, Nine Innings, A Love Affair with Baseball (2001)

As someone who thinks that baseball is the purest form of sport (at least when it's played properly and PEDs aren't involved...but I digress) I very much enjoyed Mr. Benson's simple tribute to the game. Like Mr. Benson, I like going to a minor league park nearly as much as I enjoy going to a major league one. There is something that's just so small town America about going to a minor league game, whether it be the carnival-like games played between innings by children or the fact that it doesn't cost an arm-and-a-leg to go. Whenever I have had to explain why I love baseball so much, I have always said that I enjoy the rhythms of the game and that for six months out of the year it's played every single day, and this book seems to be a quiet meditation on these truths and others about why baseball is always called America's national past time.

I think if Mr. Benson had stuck to more of the spiritual aspects of the game (which in his introduction he states he is setting out to do) this might have been a better book. Unfortunately, he gets bogged down in details that I don't necessarily think are important nor do they relate too much to the game on a universal level. But, to paraphrase a dear friend of mine, Mr. Benson is quite clearly a baseball fan, and that makes him better than many other people. I would, however, have enjoyed it more if he had gone more in depth into baseball's peculiar eccentricities or more of the history of the game and how it has become ingrained in our national consciousness. I firmly believe any baseball fan will enjoy this though if they allow themselves to become a little swept up in the sentimentality of Mr. Benson. ( )