Full Description
Written by and for baseball fans (or those trying to live with one), this collection of essays joins a perennial conversation all fans have--"Why do we love baseball?" Thirty contributors share personal narratives of how they found an abiding passion for the sport and how their relationship to it changed over the years. Tracing the thematic arc of a typical season, the essays begin with stories of spring training optimism, followed by the guts and grind of the regular season, and ending with the glory (or heartbreak) of the playoffs.
Contents
Table of Contents
Preface
Part I. Spring Training
Somewhere the Sun Is Shining (Diana Nelson Jones)
Opening Days (Glenn B. Marcus)
Throw Like a Girl (Rebecca Bratcher Laxton)
Meet My Best Friend, John Hiller (Tom Stanton)
Walk 'Em Home (Victoria Stopp)
The Language of the Gods (Brendan O'Meara)
Part II. The Season
The Ten Commandments of a Baseball Fan (As Taught to Me by My Wife) (Henry Doss)
The Girl from Cleveland (Nancy A. Gutierrez)
Becoming a Yankees Fan During the Horace Clarke Years (David Wolin)
Get a Shower Before Somebody Gets Hurt (Julie E. Townsend)
Walk-Off in St. Louis (Caroline Kane Kenna)
Love, Hate, Cubs (David E. Malehorn)
Mom, Dad, Ernie and Paul (Stephen P. Ward)
Finding Home: My Grandfather and the House of David Baseball Team (Juanita Ramsey-Jevne)
What Is That Blue Man Doing? (Ellyn Ritterskamp)
Dark as a Dungeon: Coal Country Baseball (Jody DiPerna)
Pete Rose Way (L.C. Fiore)
How Gus Greenlee, Sonnyman Jackson and the Numbers Barons Saved Black Baseball (Kevin Kirkland)
A Little More with Every Pitch (Lawrence Lawson)
My Inheritance (Karen Hamilton)
Citizen Cal (Robyn Barberry)
She Just Wanted to Play (Rachel Pfennig Hales)
Big Ed: The Ballplayer in Decline (Stephen Kirk)
Resume Play (Elizabeth Scott Leik)
Base-Bawling (Jean C. O'Brien)
Part III. The Post-Season
Maz's Homer (Joseph Bathanti)
Jackie (Douglas J. Butler)154
Hey, Hey and Holy Cow (Becky Mason Stragand)
Confessions of a Yet-to-Be Fan (Sam Watson)
Nothing Else Like It (Chris Arvidson)
About the Contributors
Index 183
