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Fail Better: Why Baseball Matters
Taking seriously the idea that baseball is a study in failure―a very successful batter manages a base hit in just three of every ten attempts―Mark Kingwell argues that there is no better tutor of human failure’s enduring significance than this strange, crooked game of base, where geometry becomes poetry. Weaving elements of memoir, philosophical reflection, sports writing, and humour, Fail Better is an intellectual love letter to baseball by one of North America’s most engaging philosophers. Kingwell illustrates complex concepts like theoretically infinite game-space, “time out of time,” and the rules of civility with accessible examples drawn from the game, its history, and his own halting efforts to hit ‘em where they ain’t. Beyond a “Beckett meets baseball” study in failure, Kingwell crafts a thoughtful appreciation of why sports matter, and how they change our vision of the world. Never pretentious, always entertaining, Fail Better is set to be the homerun non-fiction title of the season.
304 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2017
14 people are currently reading
201 people want to read
About the author
Mark Kingwell
44 books57 followersMark Gerald Kingwell B.A, M.Litt, M.Phil, PhD, D.F.A. (born March 1, 1963) is a Canadian philosopher who is currently professor of philosophy and associate chair at the University of Toronto's Department of Philosophy. Kingwell is a fellow of Trinity College and a Senior Fellow of Massey College. He specialises in theories of politics and culture.
Kingwell has published twelve different books, most notably, A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism, which was awarded the Spitz Prize for political theory in 1997. In 2000 Kingwell received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, for contributions to theory and criticism. He has held visiting posts at various institutions including: Cambridge University, University of California at Berkeley, and City University of New York where he held the title of Weissman Distinguished Professor of Humanities.
He studied at the University of Toronto, editing The Varsity through 1983 to 1984 and the University of Toronto Review from 84-85. He received his BA degree from the University of St. Michael's College with High Distinction in 1985, his MLitt degree from Edinburgh University in 1987, and both his M.Phil and PhD degrees from Yale University in 1989 and 1991 respectively. He was married to Gail Donaldson in 1988. The marriage ended in divorce in 2004.
Kingwell is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine, the literary quarterly Descant, the political monthly This Magazine and the Globe and Mail books section. He was also a drinks columnist for the men's magazine Toro. He was formerly a columnist for the National Post, and a contributing editor of Saturday Night. He frequently appears on television and radio, often on the CBC, and is well known for his appearance in the documentary film The Corporation. He has delivered, among others, the George Grant, Harold Innis, Marx Wartofsky and Larkin-Stuart memorial lectures.
Kingwell’s work has been translated into ten languages, and he lectures to academic and popular audiences around the world. From 2001 to 2004, he was chair of the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum. His work on philosophy, art, and architecture has appeared in many leading academic journals and magazines, including The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Forum, Ethics, Political Theory, and the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, the New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, Utne Reader, Adbusters, the Walrus, Harvard Design Magazine,Canadian Art, Azure, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post.
Kingwell is one of two University of Toronto professors teaching a first year philosophy course entitled Introduction to Philosophy. Kingwell teaches his class in Victoria College's Isabel Bader Theatre, with a class size of around 700 students. He has also been part of the University of Trinity College's TrinityOne program, for which he taught a seminar class entitled Ethics and the Creative Imagination.
He describes himself as a social democrat and a "recovering Catholic". According to the Canadian Who's Who 2006, he also enjoys running, baseball, basketball, jazz, films and pop music. He has two brothers: a younger brother named Sean Kingwell and an older brother named Steven Kingwell.
Kingwell has published twelve different books, most notably, A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism, which was awarded the Spitz Prize for political theory in 1997. In 2000 Kingwell received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, for contributions to theory and criticism. He has held visiting posts at various institutions including: Cambridge University, University of California at Berkeley, and City University of New York where he held the title of Weissman Distinguished Professor of Humanities.
He studied at the University of Toronto, editing The Varsity through 1983 to 1984 and the University of Toronto Review from 84-85. He received his BA degree from the University of St. Michael's College with High Distinction in 1985, his MLitt degree from Edinburgh University in 1987, and both his M.Phil and PhD degrees from Yale University in 1989 and 1991 respectively. He was married to Gail Donaldson in 1988. The marriage ended in divorce in 2004.
Kingwell is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine, the literary quarterly Descant, the political monthly This Magazine and the Globe and Mail books section. He was also a drinks columnist for the men's magazine Toro. He was formerly a columnist for the National Post, and a contributing editor of Saturday Night. He frequently appears on television and radio, often on the CBC, and is well known for his appearance in the documentary film The Corporation. He has delivered, among others, the George Grant, Harold Innis, Marx Wartofsky and Larkin-Stuart memorial lectures.
Kingwell’s work has been translated into ten languages, and he lectures to academic and popular audiences around the world. From 2001 to 2004, he was chair of the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum. His work on philosophy, art, and architecture has appeared in many leading academic journals and magazines, including The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Forum, Ethics, Political Theory, and the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, the New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, Utne Reader, Adbusters, the Walrus, Harvard Design Magazine,Canadian Art, Azure, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post.
Kingwell is one of two University of Toronto professors teaching a first year philosophy course entitled Introduction to Philosophy. Kingwell teaches his class in Victoria College's Isabel Bader Theatre, with a class size of around 700 students. He has also been part of the University of Trinity College's TrinityOne program, for which he taught a seminar class entitled Ethics and the Creative Imagination.
He describes himself as a social democrat and a "recovering Catholic". According to the Canadian Who's Who 2006, he also enjoys running, baseball, basketball, jazz, films and pop music. He has two brothers: a younger brother named Sean Kingwell and an older brother named Steven Kingwell.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
June 21, 2017
Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and a baseball fan. He's written a terrific book about baseball and about the philosophic tones it's always inspired, from The Simpsons (referenced more than once here) to A. Bartlett Giamatti. This isn't the 1st book about the obvious kinship between philosophy and baseball, nor is it the 1st by a professional philosopher, but I may have liked this the best because it not only addresses the game academically but also nostalgically, historically, morally, and poetically as well as memorially. Kingwell writes about what the game means to him personally as a philosopher and as a lifetime fan.
I found myself questioning at times if it's a book about baseball or a book about philosophy. And the answer is both, but mostly about baseball, particularly as it applies to life, Kingwell's and ours. So there is heavy discourse on the balk considered in the light of Aristotelian or Galilean physics or striking out seen through Hume's formulation of moderate scarcity or how Kant's Critique of Judgment anticipated the aesthetic beauty of baseball. But these are balanced by Kingwell's own personal experiences as a fan and reflection pulled from his vast knowledge of the game and those who've played it. Despite his assertions of baseball as transcendence and the ball park as spacetime, he manages to show us everything else baseball is and how it fits into our lives.
His great theme is that of failure, that baseball shows us that even by failing most of the time--as, famously, getting only 3 base hits in 10 at-bats--we realize great success. But in such failing we learn that failure always carries a vision of perfection. Ultimately, it's how baseball as well as the lives we lead matter, by using failure as inspiration to achieve better and to change our lives. He agrees with others that baseball possesses Zen qualities. Early in the book he writes about the Zen archer and effortless excellence. Near the end he shows us a Zen archer, Ichiro Suzuki, an outfielder capable of laser-accurate bullet throws from right field to 3d or home. He once commented on a throw-out at 3d base, "The ball was hit right to me. Why did he run when I was going to throw him out?" At the end he brings us to the notion of "purposiveness without purpose," that baseball only means the beauty we derive from it. "Baseball is just baseball...and entirely without purpose. Baseball achieves nothing. That is why it is so important." This is a beautiful book about a beautiful game.
I found myself questioning at times if it's a book about baseball or a book about philosophy. And the answer is both, but mostly about baseball, particularly as it applies to life, Kingwell's and ours. So there is heavy discourse on the balk considered in the light of Aristotelian or Galilean physics or striking out seen through Hume's formulation of moderate scarcity or how Kant's Critique of Judgment anticipated the aesthetic beauty of baseball. But these are balanced by Kingwell's own personal experiences as a fan and reflection pulled from his vast knowledge of the game and those who've played it. Despite his assertions of baseball as transcendence and the ball park as spacetime, he manages to show us everything else baseball is and how it fits into our lives.
His great theme is that of failure, that baseball shows us that even by failing most of the time--as, famously, getting only 3 base hits in 10 at-bats--we realize great success. But in such failing we learn that failure always carries a vision of perfection. Ultimately, it's how baseball as well as the lives we lead matter, by using failure as inspiration to achieve better and to change our lives. He agrees with others that baseball possesses Zen qualities. Early in the book he writes about the Zen archer and effortless excellence. Near the end he shows us a Zen archer, Ichiro Suzuki, an outfielder capable of laser-accurate bullet throws from right field to 3d or home. He once commented on a throw-out at 3d base, "The ball was hit right to me. Why did he run when I was going to throw him out?" At the end he brings us to the notion of "purposiveness without purpose," that baseball only means the beauty we derive from it. "Baseball is just baseball...and entirely without purpose. Baseball achieves nothing. That is why it is so important." This is a beautiful book about a beautiful game.
August 11, 2021
"Fail Better" read better the second time around in anticipation of tomorrow night's much anticipated "Field of Dreams" professional baseball game between the Yankees and White Sox in a recently created northern Iowa cornfield, a ball diamond not too far from the movie version FoD original field - a movie all baseball fans adore, seminal as Ken Burns' doc. or Kostner's other "Bull Durham" classic. Kingwell writes as a Canadian Toronto Blue Jays fan who enjoyed the euphoric validation of World Series wins to the good. He explores some of baseball legend and lore, history and present/future. And why philosophically, baseball has its place of ponder and wonder among our worldy pleasures.
August 3, 2017
Erudite and accessible, this is a philosopher's love letter to baseball. Fail Better is comprised of a series of short, linked, discursive essays. You can run through these essays quickly, but if you spend some quiet time with them, they are richly rewarding. Running through them, references to The Simpsons and Kant appear in almost equal measure. Kingwell writes in a way that draws the reader close, and one finishes the book feeling as though one has spent the afternoon at the ballpark philosophizing with Kingwell between innings.
March 29, 2017
A pretty pretentious book. I waved from not liking it to liking it. It reminds me a lot of one of Roger Angell's books. Angel is a master this author is not. That being said, of course there is no such thing as a totally bad book about baseball.
July 27, 2018
The title, “Fail Better”, comes from Samuel Beckett’s novella, Westward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” It’s a line Cornel West loves as an articulation of human finitude — another way of expressing the grating Pauline observation that we all fall short. Cornel West likes to ascribe this sort of thing to Beckett’s location in the lineage of Irish Protestantism. A lapsed Protestant to Cornel West is still a Protestant.
I’m not the most athletic person, nor do I follow or play sports with any degree of consistency. I’m more inclined to stay at home and take a few swings at a philosophical treatise way over my head — and strike out, so to speak, another philosopher’s work I’m not meant to comprehend. Yet I grew up playing baseball, and if I were athletic enough to have a favourite sport it would be baseball. So, I could not help but be drawn to this book when I heard Mark Kingwell talking about it on an episode of CBC Ideas, for which he went to a Jays game with Paul Kennedy.
The title “Fail Better” refers to that magical .300 batting average that can get you enshrined into Cooperstown (that’s a metonym for baseball’s hall of fame). A reminder how even the most beautifully lived lives are (for the most part) full of more failure than success, and that falling short is perfectly okay. In fact, it’s what makes us human.
Kingwell is a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, one whose writing is actually comprehensible, conversational, and fun to read. Though the book contains more memoir than I was ready for, or even preferred, it was all still enjoyable for me. I learned so much, though some of the book reviews here have pointed out some ‘errors’ on Kingwell’s part. But I guess it’s fitting for a book called “Fail Better”. Like the error statistics following around baseball players their entire careers (which Kingwell talks about here), I suppose the minor missteps he made in the book are enshrined in print for the rest of his life too.
While I think Kingwell’s writing on colonialism was not as strong, I found his introduction to C. L. R. James postcolonial/Marxist commentary on the game of cricket to be fascinating, though not as well applied to baseball in Canada as Kingwell tried to do. Framing Canada as a victimized colony of the United States, in my opinion, obfuscates the very damaging colonial history that the Canadian state has imposed on many indigenous nations across the land, so I just feel it’s not the most appropriate language for exploring American hegemony.
Also, while Kingwell wrote a really fascinating chapter on Iris Marion Young’s “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality”, I think he could have wrote some more on the handful of women beginning to play professionally in Japan, in the minor leagues, and in the summer leagues. That’s a subject I’d be curious to hear more about, though maybe it’s not his place to expound on that subject.
And while Kingwell does make some comments on the wellspring of talent coming out of Latin America, and the racist reactions of old white people to the stylistic flourishes of Latin American players like Bautista, I think there was some interesting potential to more fully elaborate on Latin American politics and its relation to baseball. There was a neat episode of the n+1 podcast that covered this subject fairly well.
Kingwell’s commentary on Daoist thought I found to be really interesting. In fact, I ended up reading Lao Tzu’s Daodejing because of it was highly regarded by the Red Sox and Expos pitcher Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee, a lefty and a leftist with some curious philosophical views of his own.
I found Kingwell’s expositions on Hegel, Kant, and Wittgenstein, more comprehensible than most philosophers I’ve tried to read, and the extra connections to baseball theory didn’t hurt. His literary references to McLuhan, Updike and DeLillo were all enjoyable. One of my favourite references he made though was to Bart Giamatti’s writing on baseball. From the Romanticist notion of ‘returning home’ (including a little commentary on Odysseus, which reminded me of the one Wendell Berry did in “The Unsettle of America) to the notion of baseball as outside of time, not marked by definite time like a basketball or soccer game, but extending out for however long it takes to get three outs and complete nine innings. Therefore time is not marked by the universal instrument of quartz oscillations, but by outs and innings, or more specifically, marked by a less predictable outworking of human bodies on a field. I thought Giamatti’s connection of baseball and Sabbath to be beautiful. I better understand now why one of my favourite theologians Walter Brueggemann loves baseball. It has this quality of sacred time, the same sort of feeling you might encounter in the ee cummings poem “I Thank You God” which captures for the theologian David Bartlett what John’s gospel meant by “eternal life”. Bartlett on the famous line from John 3 says: “Eternal life is that daily life that is touched by God’s eternity. It is life here and now, that at the same time manifests all the beauty and hope and astonishing love of God’s own glory.” I mean it’s not the sort of thing you experience at the SkyDome, or even lots of contemporary ball games these days, but it’s something you can still experience and some spring training or minor league games. A certain quietness that you might associate with a well-crafted haiku or an expansive piece by Arvo Part.
As a Christian, it’s this sort of thing that I see to be at the heart of recovering the power of Sabbath, one which stands in resistance to the capitalist edict to ceaselessly produce for deadlines which never stop coming. I grew up playing baseball, and while I feel that many of the people I played with were ruthlessly competitive to the point of making me uncomfortable, I think baseball’s strange geometry actually transcends the sort geometry of conquest that is common to most sports, paradigmatically so in American football. I think baseball’s slow pace, and literary character, made some sort of unconscious mark on me as I played it all those years growing up. I used to borrow books from the library, after every swimming lesson I had at a community centre with a library, and they were mostly baseball biographies on people like Fergie Jenkins (I just found the title of the book I read, it was called "The Game Is Easy, Life Is Hard"). I haven’t read on sports for years, so I was delighted to find this on my local library shelf. I thought it was a great read for anyone who grew up playing baseball and enjoys some literary-inclined writing on the subject, this just might be your slice of paradise. As Giamatti says, take time for paradise.
I’m not the most athletic person, nor do I follow or play sports with any degree of consistency. I’m more inclined to stay at home and take a few swings at a philosophical treatise way over my head — and strike out, so to speak, another philosopher’s work I’m not meant to comprehend. Yet I grew up playing baseball, and if I were athletic enough to have a favourite sport it would be baseball. So, I could not help but be drawn to this book when I heard Mark Kingwell talking about it on an episode of CBC Ideas, for which he went to a Jays game with Paul Kennedy.
The title “Fail Better” refers to that magical .300 batting average that can get you enshrined into Cooperstown (that’s a metonym for baseball’s hall of fame). A reminder how even the most beautifully lived lives are (for the most part) full of more failure than success, and that falling short is perfectly okay. In fact, it’s what makes us human.
Kingwell is a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, one whose writing is actually comprehensible, conversational, and fun to read. Though the book contains more memoir than I was ready for, or even preferred, it was all still enjoyable for me. I learned so much, though some of the book reviews here have pointed out some ‘errors’ on Kingwell’s part. But I guess it’s fitting for a book called “Fail Better”. Like the error statistics following around baseball players their entire careers (which Kingwell talks about here), I suppose the minor missteps he made in the book are enshrined in print for the rest of his life too.
While I think Kingwell’s writing on colonialism was not as strong, I found his introduction to C. L. R. James postcolonial/Marxist commentary on the game of cricket to be fascinating, though not as well applied to baseball in Canada as Kingwell tried to do. Framing Canada as a victimized colony of the United States, in my opinion, obfuscates the very damaging colonial history that the Canadian state has imposed on many indigenous nations across the land, so I just feel it’s not the most appropriate language for exploring American hegemony.
Also, while Kingwell wrote a really fascinating chapter on Iris Marion Young’s “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality”, I think he could have wrote some more on the handful of women beginning to play professionally in Japan, in the minor leagues, and in the summer leagues. That’s a subject I’d be curious to hear more about, though maybe it’s not his place to expound on that subject.
And while Kingwell does make some comments on the wellspring of talent coming out of Latin America, and the racist reactions of old white people to the stylistic flourishes of Latin American players like Bautista, I think there was some interesting potential to more fully elaborate on Latin American politics and its relation to baseball. There was a neat episode of the n+1 podcast that covered this subject fairly well.
Kingwell’s commentary on Daoist thought I found to be really interesting. In fact, I ended up reading Lao Tzu’s Daodejing because of it was highly regarded by the Red Sox and Expos pitcher Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee, a lefty and a leftist with some curious philosophical views of his own.
I found Kingwell’s expositions on Hegel, Kant, and Wittgenstein, more comprehensible than most philosophers I’ve tried to read, and the extra connections to baseball theory didn’t hurt. His literary references to McLuhan, Updike and DeLillo were all enjoyable. One of my favourite references he made though was to Bart Giamatti’s writing on baseball. From the Romanticist notion of ‘returning home’ (including a little commentary on Odysseus, which reminded me of the one Wendell Berry did in “The Unsettle of America) to the notion of baseball as outside of time, not marked by definite time like a basketball or soccer game, but extending out for however long it takes to get three outs and complete nine innings. Therefore time is not marked by the universal instrument of quartz oscillations, but by outs and innings, or more specifically, marked by a less predictable outworking of human bodies on a field. I thought Giamatti’s connection of baseball and Sabbath to be beautiful. I better understand now why one of my favourite theologians Walter Brueggemann loves baseball. It has this quality of sacred time, the same sort of feeling you might encounter in the ee cummings poem “I Thank You God” which captures for the theologian David Bartlett what John’s gospel meant by “eternal life”. Bartlett on the famous line from John 3 says: “Eternal life is that daily life that is touched by God’s eternity. It is life here and now, that at the same time manifests all the beauty and hope and astonishing love of God’s own glory.” I mean it’s not the sort of thing you experience at the SkyDome, or even lots of contemporary ball games these days, but it’s something you can still experience and some spring training or minor league games. A certain quietness that you might associate with a well-crafted haiku or an expansive piece by Arvo Part.
As a Christian, it’s this sort of thing that I see to be at the heart of recovering the power of Sabbath, one which stands in resistance to the capitalist edict to ceaselessly produce for deadlines which never stop coming. I grew up playing baseball, and while I feel that many of the people I played with were ruthlessly competitive to the point of making me uncomfortable, I think baseball’s strange geometry actually transcends the sort geometry of conquest that is common to most sports, paradigmatically so in American football. I think baseball’s slow pace, and literary character, made some sort of unconscious mark on me as I played it all those years growing up. I used to borrow books from the library, after every swimming lesson I had at a community centre with a library, and they were mostly baseball biographies on people like Fergie Jenkins (I just found the title of the book I read, it was called "The Game Is Easy, Life Is Hard"). I haven’t read on sports for years, so I was delighted to find this on my local library shelf. I thought it was a great read for anyone who grew up playing baseball and enjoys some literary-inclined writing on the subject, this just might be your slice of paradise. As Giamatti says, take time for paradise.
June 29, 2017
This is a pretty good one for true baseball lovers. It's the kind of book for someone who likes to spend time simply revelling in the pure love of the game itself. There is a unique something--a certain spark--that accompanies the love of baseball, a capacity for that love to transport the mind to a place that feels (for the baseball lover) as pure as material grace can get. This books, at its best, is the sharing of some moments of revelling in the game between the author and the reader.
Kingwell is a good writer, and he has some interesting insights and historical anecdotes. I learned a few things, and enjoyed remembering some other things. Some philosophical concepts get blended in--this don't always work well, but sometimes they add some interesting insight. In the main, Kingwell's love of the game is obvious.
On the down side, Kingwell can often lapse into longish discussions of his own boyhood and baseball experiences that are not necessarily that interesting for those who weren't there with him (or didn't see that game, or don't really follow that team...). The book is (by its own admission) a bit disjointed--more a series of essays than a sustained discussion; some of the chapters are much better than others for this reason. Early chapters are the best, I faded a bit from about mid-way forward.
If you truly love baseball, you'll like spending a few hours with Kingwell on this one. Definitely not one for even a casual fan, however.
Kingwell is a good writer, and he has some interesting insights and historical anecdotes. I learned a few things, and enjoyed remembering some other things. Some philosophical concepts get blended in--this don't always work well, but sometimes they add some interesting insight. In the main, Kingwell's love of the game is obvious.
On the down side, Kingwell can often lapse into longish discussions of his own boyhood and baseball experiences that are not necessarily that interesting for those who weren't there with him (or didn't see that game, or don't really follow that team...). The book is (by its own admission) a bit disjointed--more a series of essays than a sustained discussion; some of the chapters are much better than others for this reason. Early chapters are the best, I faded a bit from about mid-way forward.
If you truly love baseball, you'll like spending a few hours with Kingwell on this one. Definitely not one for even a casual fan, however.
September 10, 2018
For the first 50 pages of this book, I was convinced that it would be one of my first one-star reviews. While I was intrigued by its premise - a book that explores philosophy and the good life through baseball! - much of the first chapters are stream-of-consciousness narratives that seemingly lead nowhere. Unless you fancy yourself the Walt Whitman or Jack Kerouac of your era, chances are that this writing style irritates more than it pleases. But, the book eventually settles down into a more organized blend of philosophy, memoir, and baseball history that challenges the reader to think deeply about the game - in fact, about the concept of a "game" itself - and what it might say about life. I especially liked the chapters towards the middle of the book that describe baseball as a "linear" game, in contrast to "territorial" games such as football, hockey, and soccer. There seems to be something about a baseball game and its lack of a defined clock or standardized field that can help us think about how to live a life that transcends the commodification of time. As it happened, I went to two Washington Nationals games over the course of reading the book, and found myself thinking about these concepts while watching the players (nearly) effortlessly executing the rhythms and challenges of the game.
August 20, 2017
I don't care for the Roger Angell, George Will peons to baseball. Not sure why that is. "Baseball is special and important because it is a pastoral game, played with no clock, where fathers go with their sons....." This is all fine, but leaves me cold.
With the title I thought we might get a better examination of the iterative nature of baseball, or how it takes a personality type that can use failure as a learning accelerator to ultimately come out on top. There were bits of that, but not enough for me.
The most enjoyable pieces of this were the most personal -- stories about the author's fandom of the Toronto Blue Jays, and time playing on the company softball team. His take on the fabled Canadian politeness and how daft and insulting he finds the typical American view of Canadians was an eye-opener.
This one was a birthday present. Sorry, Sam. Not my favorite. Love you.
With the title I thought we might get a better examination of the iterative nature of baseball, or how it takes a personality type that can use failure as a learning accelerator to ultimately come out on top. There were bits of that, but not enough for me.
The most enjoyable pieces of this were the most personal -- stories about the author's fandom of the Toronto Blue Jays, and time playing on the company softball team. His take on the fabled Canadian politeness and how daft and insulting he finds the typical American view of Canadians was an eye-opener.
This one was a birthday present. Sorry, Sam. Not my favorite. Love you.
June 11, 2017
This work reads like a Masters Thesis relating philosophy to sports in general, focusing on baseball. At its best it helps expand one's views on baseball by placing it in a cultural and theoretical context--I enjoyed his ruminations on space and failure in baseball--but Kingwell's observations roam all over, often tangling themselves together. Much of the book suffers from bloat and confusion caused by Kingwell's desire to relate the concepts to great works of literature. It tries to do too much in each essay, and the work suffers for it. This work is for the serious philosophy fan or academic, I would recommend only certain chapters for baseball fans. 3 stars b/c the more focused parts are compelling.
December 6, 2019
I really should have liked this book. I love baseball, I love philosophy and my favorite team is the Blue Jays and the author hails from Toronto. But this book is a bit sloppy and scattered to be a good read. Thoughts are often half formed and the author has a tendency to start a thought and write something like ... but that is for another book. Then why bring it up here? The English major in me also found over a dozen typos / bad grammar / confusing sentences, all of which stopped me in my tracks. So, while I should have liked this book and wanted to like this book, ultimately it ended with disappointment.
November 27, 2025
Musings from a well-read philosopher. I must confess I found his personal anecdotes in relation to baseball more engaging than his attempts to connect baseball to philosophy. With that said, I enjoyed the book and applaud his ambition. His look at linear and territorial games was noteworthy and thanks to him I’m now going to pick up Pafko at the Wall, a book I never knew existed.
It’s a thoughtful book about baseball and its place in the world. The chapter breakdown helps with the pacing. Much like the lovely sport itself, it has slow spots and captivating moments. I liked it, but didn’t love it. Hence my rating.
It’s a thoughtful book about baseball and its place in the world. The chapter breakdown helps with the pacing. Much like the lovely sport itself, it has slow spots and captivating moments. I liked it, but didn’t love it. Hence my rating.
June 1, 2017
I received this book as part of the Goodreads Giveaway program.
This is a philosophical and personal journey into the heart and soul of baseball. I didn't know what to expect when reading this book, but found it both enlightening and interesting. The author clearly loves the sport and views it as a wonderful pastime for Canadians and Americans. There was a lot to learn in rules, sayings, viewpoints, team support, and general vernacular, all of which were fascinating. A recommended book for baseball fans and those (like me) who aren't but are curious.
This is a philosophical and personal journey into the heart and soul of baseball. I didn't know what to expect when reading this book, but found it both enlightening and interesting. The author clearly loves the sport and views it as a wonderful pastime for Canadians and Americans. There was a lot to learn in rules, sayings, viewpoints, team support, and general vernacular, all of which were fascinating. A recommended book for baseball fans and those (like me) who aren't but are curious.
October 9, 2017
Heavy on baseball geekery and light philosophy, as is the time-honored writing about baseball tradition. With a smattering of humor, navel-gazing (including knockaround self-depreciation), and memories of baseball days past. No breakthroughs, but it's a pleasant read and journey with a likable guide at the lead. If you care about baseball--but then I don't know why you'd pick this book up if you don't.
March 11, 2018
Liked it quite a bit.
More of life lessons and almost inspirational stream-of-consciousness at times than strictly a “baseball” book. That is not a bad thing.
Really enjoyed many chapters (essays). Skipped parts of others. I liked how it was structured this way.
The slang chapter seemed like an afterthought and I would have liked to have been given a lot more from that section.
More of life lessons and almost inspirational stream-of-consciousness at times than strictly a “baseball” book. That is not a bad thing.
Really enjoyed many chapters (essays). Skipped parts of others. I liked how it was structured this way.
The slang chapter seemed like an afterthought and I would have liked to have been given a lot more from that section.
June 23, 2022
I bought this book in the hope to learn a bit more about the fascinating game of baseball and it’s history.
What I found was a bunch of short essays and memoirs (some really good and entertaining) almost haphazardly merged into a book.
It felt that the author was trying to be a bit too academic when trying to discuss the game of the masses.
What I found was a bunch of short essays and memoirs (some really good and entertaining) almost haphazardly merged into a book.
It felt that the author was trying to be a bit too academic when trying to discuss the game of the masses.
June 16, 2017
Has some good moments, but is generally a bit of a slog to read. In fairness, I was not looking for a philosophical take on the game. I enjoy the plentiful Toronto Blue Jays references (being a local), but this is probably not a good thing for those outside of Ontario.
September 16, 2017
The concept is right up my alley, but I found the work to be a mixed bag. Some very enjoyable essays, others that failed to capture my attention. It also suffers from a lack of fact-checking. A hardcore baseball fan will notice several mistakes in terms of dates, etc.
August 27, 2018
Surprisingly accessible for a non baseball fan, makes some very key points: baseball like life in penalizing for errors below average expected plays but not recognizing extraordinary successes. Sometimes too heavy on philosophy and jargon though, and wordy.
May 29, 2017
Philosophers aren't always baseball fans (though my dad was), but baseball fans are always philosophers. Interesting and fun book for baseball fans, not so much for others.
June 11, 2018
That a book can be both so erudite and so conversational on a subject is rare. A real treat in the world of baseball writing: large-hearted, thoughtful, and willing to be delighted.
March 11, 2022
Over the top at times (after all it is only a game). If you love baseball you will enjoy this book. Written by a professor of philosophy that loves baseball. What could go wrong? Worth reading
July 20, 2024
Book in a sentence: this is a book about the author’s relationship with baseball, it involves a lot of rambling about his childhood, philosophy, baseball history and much more.
January 3, 2019
Kingwell, a philosophy professor, "explains why baseball matters through a series of essays. He argues there is no better tutor of human failure's enduring significance than baseball." Interviewed on Justin McGuire's podcast, "Baseball by the Book" on 112618.
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