Why Baseball Matters

Why X Matters Series

by Susan Jacoby

A best-selling author and passionate baseball fan takes a tough-minded look at America’s most traditional game in our twenty-first-century culture of digital distraction

Baseball, first dubbed the “national pastime” in print in 1856, is the country’s most tradition-bound sport. Despite remaining popular and profitable into the twenty-first century, the game is losing young fans, among African Americans and women as well as white men. Furthermore, baseball’s greatest charm—a clockless suspension of time—is also its greatest liability in a culture of digital distraction.

These paradoxes are explored by the historian and passionate baseball fan Susan Jacoby in a book that is both a love letter to the game and a tough-minded analysis of the current challenges to its special position—in reality and myth—in American culture. The concise but wide-ranging analysis moves from the Civil War—when many soldiers played ball in northern and southern prisoner-of-war camps—to interviews with top baseball officials and young men who prefer playing online “fantasy baseball” to attending real games.

Revisiting her youthful days of watching televised baseball in her grandfather’s bar, the author links her love of the game with the informal education she received in everything from baseball’s history of racial segregation to pitch location. Jacoby argues forcefully that the major challenge to baseball today is a shortened attention span at odds with a long game in which great hitters fail two out of three times. Without sanitizing this basic problem, Why Baseball Matters remind us that the game has retained its grip on our hearts precisely because it has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reinvent itself in times of immense social change.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, Essays, Audiobook, History

224 pages, Hardcover

Published March 20, 2018

About the author

Susan Jacoby is an independent scholar and best-selling author. The most recent of her seven previous books is The Age of American Unreason. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Steve Donoghue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take me out to the ball game! So I can do some reading and maybe get in a pleasant mid-afternoon nap in between the rare intervals when something actually HAPPENS! The great Susan Jacoby's new book is "Why Baseball Matters," and she goes at her subject with eloquence and stubbornness. My somewhat skeptical review:

https://openlettersreview.com/open-le...

[Mallory Mac · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a young, female baseball fan, I really wanted to like this book. Jacoby presents some interesting points and shares some neat anecdotes, but overall I found the book too disjointed, rambling, and repetitive. Kind of ironic that I can sit through a three hour baseball game and never lose attention, but it took me over two months to finish this book :)

I still commend her for the effort, and agree with her conclusion that we need to figure out how to attract more young people to baseball WITHOUT changing the core of the game. Instead, embrace what is unique and wonderful about baseball.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is part of a series, apparently, that look at why things matter. I thought the title was misleading given the subject. I would say this book is more of a personal memoir about one's own experience with baseball, why it is unique among sports played today, and the challenges it faces with younger fans not predisposed to the pace of the game.

The book is well-written and I enjoyed the parts about her watching and learning the game at her grandfather's pub. She points out the nuances of the game and why, perhaps, it is a game with lifelong fans but is also selective about its fans more so than other sports. I didn't come away with ideas for improvement, or why baseball matters as a whole, but more of a personal journey through life with the game along for the ride. I'd recommend for the serious baseball fan.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to figure whether a book about one's favorite sport is so astonishingly good or if one's love of baseball simply turns a book's lackluster qualities into stellar ones. I'll enjoy any book about baseball. Still, this revealed itself t0 be not hosannas for the game so much as a meditation on its challenges in our current culture.

As aware as anyone else of today's appetite for and focus on our digital devices, I didn't know it's affecting baseball. What's wrong mostly is a general decline of interest in sports, not just baseball. And this is due in large part to the short attention span of most of today's digital-hungry public. This predicts a smaller fan base for the future, too. Teenagers today are more interested in video games and social media than in sports. Age isn't the only demographic affecting change, though. There's a decreasing interest among African Americans and a marked decrease in the number of African American players. Jacoby cites the drought of African American stars since the 1980s as one reason black youngsters tend to gravitate toward football and basketball rather than baseball. She says she's puzzled by the lack of female fans, another group not generally engaged with baseball.

She writes that the pressures of what she calls our current age of distraction will force change on the game. Baseball is resilient enough that it can make sharp adjustments as it's done before, as shown by changes brought about by the advent of free agency or of the use of steroids necessitating drug testing. The challenges today are serious. The nature of a baseball game itself, its demand of concentration in order to fully appreciate it, is at odds with America's dependence on digital technology.

Those who own baseball and are responsible for sustaining its value as a game America will continue to love--the owners themselves and players' associations--are aware of the problems and are thinking about remedies. The changes Jacoby writes about are scary. The whole debate about the length of games and the need to shorten them is really about the lack of understanding of baseball's finer points by younger fans saddled with a short attention span. Some changes are truly drastic. She writes about the idea of having ties after 9 innings go into some sort of home run derby, kind of like a hockey shoot out. And she mentions one idea is to have any foul ball with 2 strikes count as the batter striking out. To me it's the end of civilization as we know it. Our current baseball season is already abuzz with the unusually high number of home runs and strikeouts and then we read Jacoby's report that those who create adjustments in the game are suggesting more home runs and easier strikeouts as a way to make the game more palatable to a large segment of young fans. This is the way the world ends.

It's obvious that Jacoby is knowledgeable about baseball. The many inclusions of details of her own experiences watching games (she's a Mets fan) speak to her appreciation of the game and her wanting what's best for it today. She articulates why it matters through values. She quotes Bill Lee, the former Boston and Montreal pitcher: "Baseball is the belly button of our society. Straighten out baseball, you'll straighten out the rest of the world." Jacoby associates the belly button with nourishment of values and entertainment. Baseball has always been integrated with the American virtues we cherish, just as it has helped to shape healthy attitudes and behavior. She reminds us that baseball today is played the same as 50 or 60 years ago. What's changing is that baseball's popularity isn't being carried over to younger generations. If you love the game as I do this slim book is packed with lots to think about.

[Laura]

The author didn’t answer the question of “why baseball matters.” The long middle section about the internet was really a rant about “kids these days” while insisting that it wasn’t. And finally there’s a bizarre footnote arguing that fluency in English should be mandatory for major league players. That’s where she lost me. If you’re really worried about young Americans’ disinterest in baseball, focusing on the players’ English skills is so out of touch.

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very well written work, with valid questions (and some answers) about where baseball is headed in today's world. I appreciated the author's view of the sport, and this is a timely piece of work given baseball's stumbling ideas to 'speed up' the game.

But I wish that ultra-liberal authors would refrain from injecting their political views where they totally distract from the topic being examined. Except for a sort-of-valid discussion of President George Bush appearance at Yankee Stadium right after 9-11, there are two or three snotty references to the 2016 US political scene that reveal the author's left-leaning bias - frankly, my dear . . .

[Eleanor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did like this, but I also struggled with some aspects of it. I will admit I'm not a dedicated baseball fan, but as the daughter of one, I was interested to read this. Jacoby makes some good points in terms of reasoning why she reckons interest in baseball has gone down, as well as debunking some common classist and racist theories. However, I think she is a little hung up on the shortened attention spans of young people. Okay, yes, it's true that attention spans have gone down, and yes, baseball is a game that requires patience, but I also think it's not fair to people who enjoy getting highlights and updates on their phones to dismiss them as 'young people with shit attention spans'. She returns to the point a lot of times, to the extent that you feel she's completely exhausted it.

Furthermore, she complains a lot about proposed rule changes. Okay, again, I'm not someone who watches baseball all the time, or is old enough to have experienced the 'good old days' of baseball, but I also think she's too harsh on ideas to update the game. I don't know enough to judge whether the changes would be good for myself, but I think her habit of simply listing proposed changes and catastrophising that they would each 'change the game' beyond recognition got a little old at times.

She did make so many interesting points when talking about why black people and women tend to be less interested in baseball these days, but these points seem skimmed over when compared to the 'young people on their phones' argument. Also, she has great analysis of youth involvement in sports, but relegates a whole load of this to the conclusion. It doesn't make sense to me to have a lot of your best points shoved at the end.

There is a long section where she looks down upon fantasy baseball (and fantasy sports in general). Again, maybe I'm not a purist, but why shouldn't people hang out to look at statistics and imagine exciting games? Okay, maybe I agree that gambling shouldn't be as big a factor as it is, but she seems to look down upon even those who play fantasy baseball casually. I'm not sure that those who are interested in fantasy but not real-life baseball would suddenly become interested in trips to the ballpark if fantasy baseball vanished.

Overall, I enjoyed a lot of her points, but I also felt that despite her assurances at the beginning that people's rose-tinted baseball pasts never truly existed, she still seems to cling to them. She seemed to catastophise every point. I will give her points for actually offering solutions at the end, though, rather than just present problems.

I guess my final point is that, having read two from this Why X Matters series, I now don't know if I understand what they're supposed to be about. Why the Museum Matters seemed to answer the question posed by the title, but this just mourned the loss of popularity of the once ubiquitous 'American pastime'.

Actually final final point, because I just remembered this. She bitterly denegrates racism against black people, but then, in her conclusion, when discussing racism against Japanese people, is less verbose. Reading between the lines, it definitely read like she wasn't in favour of it, but I wasn't entirely sure, and there was one line which read as if she meant it as a joke, like 'look what people might have said, weren't they horrible?' but it felt very tonally different to the surrounding text, and did not feel necessary at all. It was right near the end and really took me by surprise.

[John Valdez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I became interested in Susan Jacoby’s Why Baseball Matters after watching her interview segments as part of the Ken Burns Baseball Series. I will characterize her book as part love letter to baseball and part forewarning. She discusses how she came to love the game as a young girl by watching Chicago Whitesox games from her grandfather’s bar and bowling alley. She later parlayed that love into rabid New York Mets fandom and describes all her emotions during the tension-filled 1986 playoffs and World Series. Throughout this discussion, she points out what baseball fans already know - that baseball is ingrained in American Culture reflecting the best parts of our collective experience along with some of the more difficult aspects. She reinforces that baseball is a uniquely American game to be celebrated while at the same time expressing despair when it reinforced segregation or used as a device for nationalism. But despite some of the flaws associated with the business of baseball, the game remains unchanged from its inception and has given Ms. Jacoby great pleasure, ranking up there with reading and making love.

Ms. Jaboby’s primary thesis, however, suggests that the biggest challenge to baseball remaining in the coming decades centers on our society’s decreasing attention span, particularly among the youth of this country. For Jacoby, baseball is a game that takes time to play correctly. She fears that many upcoming sports fans are losing patience for watching a game that moves slower than football or basketball, especially when nothing seems to occur, not realizing that strategic pieces of the game are unfolding in every inning.

She pays quite a bit of attention to the game’s declining rate of African American participation in terms of both participation and fandom. She also discusses the need for baseball to attract and retain female fans, which is the lowest among other American team sports. Her primary appeal is for baseball to do more to grow its young fan base from all walks of American life. Citing a median fan age in its 50s-60s (she published the book in 2016), she discusses how baseball needs to make use of our evolving technology to win back young fans without fundamentally changing the game. At the time of her writing, MLB was implementing the extra innings rule where a runner starts at 2nd base and experimented with a pitch clock in the minor leagues. She writes about other suggestions to shorten the game, all of which will drastically change the game, if implemented. She implores baseball to keep the game intact and resist these changes, which will alter our truly historic American game and ends the book with 10 recommendations for baseball if it is to continue playing a role in our society.

I gave the book 3 stars trending toward 3.5 stars since to me, the book is more of a long essay. It is short as well, with the official page length 219 pages, the final third of which comprises end notes and bibliography. She does a great job discussing the issues with baseball but felt she could have expounded upon many. Some of the book is also repetitive. I did enjoy her discussion of personal stories from the game and do recommend it for someone wanting a short read on baseball and its challenges.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this title when I looked through the "top 100 books of 2018" according to the Washington Post - as an adult convert to an interest in baseball, I was curious what I might find here.

"Why X Matter" (where X is various different things) is a series of books from Yale University Press. Whether they sought Susan Jacoby out to write this about baseball or it was other way round is not clear. Jacoby has written on various historical topics - her best known work is "The Age of American Unreason." She is not someone from the baseball "industry," that is, a former player or coach, or a sports writer or other person with a financial connection of any kind to the sport. She does profess a significant person interest in baseball as a fan of the Mets in particular and watching and studying (as a fan) baseball for much of her life in general.

I wanted to like this book. For one thing, lately I am particularly attracted to books I can get into that are less than 200 pages - enjoy, complete, move on to the next one. I finished this (about 175 pages) in relatively short order but more or less forced myself through the last chapter, not wanting to call it quits without completing the thing at that point.

But . . . I wasn't that thrilled with this. The book has five chapters. The introduction and first two (of five) chapters set out some background, but after that the next three chapters seem to go round and round in circles making much the same points over and over with slight variations and anecdotes. This seemed like it could have been easily reduced to an article in The New Yorker, making the same points more succinctly (even if at some length!).

A lot of what Jacoby thinks is problematic has to do with the shrinking attention span of the rising generation(s) with their smartphone in hand in contrast to the (in her view - probably right) mostly misguided efforts of Major League Baseball to shorten the average length of games as the antidote. But some of her commentary and examples don't fit in with my own observations attending about 30 games a year - I don't agree that by default you can assume anyone engaging periodically with a smartphone while at a baseball game is in effect a lost cause in terms of sustainability as a successful future engaged fan of the game. She mentions the At Bat app, but doesn't note that it allows a fan to check up on the umpire's calls of balls and strikes more or less in real time. And Jacoby seems to have a fixed idea of what successful engagement with a baseball game should be, or small number of variants - my own experience is that there can be many different versions of enjoying baseball (at the ball park) that are all good in that they reflect long term commitment to repetition (ie, going to more games).

Of course perhaps it is just that Jacoby is a Mets fan that is my problem. Could be . . .

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Susan Jacoby's book might better be titled, "Why the things I love about baseball (along with the rest of the 20th century) are fading away". But then, I'm not an editor, who probably nixed that title for something pithier.

Much like her The Age of American Unreason, Jacoby's reminiscences of the past frequently blur the line between appreciation and blind paean. She frequently notes the racist problems of baseball's "golden age" of the 1940s and 50s, but her argument minimizes their importance when considered against the behemoth of the digital age, which Jacoby believes to be ruining American life, and with it, America's pastime.

I'm not unsympathetic to some of the problems Jacoby highlights, but many of them are not reflections of our shrinking attention span and fragmented media market. Day games are much less frequent because of increased TV ad revenue, for example.

I got most frustrated with two arguments in particular that she made. They both emanate from an underlying assumption she has that baseball's greatness lies in its lack of a clock, and its pace.

First, the pace of baseball games is variable, in ways that add nothing to the experience of the game (or what Jacoby refers to as the "interior stadium"). Jacoby is pretty selective when looking at the length of games, looking only at the period 1994 to 2016. If we look back a little farther, to when Jacoby watched games in her youth, the trendline is inescapable. In the 1970s, the average length of a game vacillated between 2:27 and 2:35. In the 2010s, it was between 2:54 and 3:10. That's fairly different, and it's not clear what those extra 30 minutes per game has gained us. It's mostly not commercial time, either - it's primarily the length of time in between pitches, multiplied over those 200+ pitches per game. Whether or not it's something that Rob Manfred should legislate out of the game, it's not a value added to the game.

The second is her argument about why baseball teams can survive a star hitter's bad night in a way that a basketball team can't survive their star's off shooting night. She says that teams can always come back because of the lack of clock. That's nonsense. It's because in baseball, a teammate's at bat is (almost) an independent variable - the cleanup hitter's strikeout doesn't limit my at bat nearly as much as a point guard's missed shot affects the shot selection of his power forward. It's arguments like these, where Jacoby tries to shoehorn various observations into her Manichean worldview, praising those who savor the game in the way she does, for the same reasons that she does, that is so frustrating to me, and make it harder to enjoy this book.

[Chip Scarinzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine book exploring why many young fans have fallen away from baseball and what the league can do to course-correct. I identified with many of the experiences the author shared in the book when recounting her own experiences with the game and found some of her research to yield solid insights.

I struggled to make the connection between some of the author's digressions that steered beyond the realm of sport, but otherwise, a quick and interesting read.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is absolutely nothing of value in this book to demonstrate why baseball matters. Yes, the author loves baseball but there were no novel solutions presented for the problems the sport faces. In addition, her thought process was all over the place. I was very disappointed and would strongly recommend baseball fans skip this book.

[Quinn Rhodes · Rating 3 out of 5]

certainly this book has its bright spots that make one appreciate the patient game of baseball, but the author also acts as if it is near a sin to appreciate faster paced games.

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

The state of baseball today is either excellent, since revenues in the sport are at an all-time high, or on life support, since many feel the games are too long and it is losing its appeal to young people. Both arguments have their merits and this book by best-selling author Susan Jacoby offers several explanations for the latter beliefs.

The basic premise of the book is that Jacoby, a woman who fell in love with the game as a child in Chicago going to White Sox games with her father, believes the sport has to realize that thanks to digital advances, the attention span of fans is shorter than ever. Baseball has to find ways to attract younger fans who have grown up in this age. She both criticizes and praises the game in the attempts to do so.

This sounds contradictory, but a reader will realize how Jacoby does this. First she explains how “baseball is a game in which one must wait, pay attention, and wait again for startling, defining moments of action.” Thus, the distractions that younger fans have in today’s digital world (beautifully explained by a young female fan) will mean that the “defining” moments will have to be powerful to keep the attention of these fans.

This doesn’t mean she necessarily agrees with baseball’s response. Indeed, she is critical of the attempts by Commissioner Rob Manfred to speed up the game and believes that is misguided as the length of the games is not the true source of the lack of younger, female and African-American fans. She also pointed to readers of the New York Times who wrote to the newspaper who believed that baseball’s woes could be addressed not by speeding up the game but instead to make it more like football. Needless to say, she wasn’t totally on board with this idea either.

She also believes that the game doesn’t make much effort to attract fans of color and female fans. Since the game doesn’t have the same transition from generation to generation as it did in the middle of the 20th century, she shows that other sports, especially football, are gaining these fans and baseball needs to step up its efforts to appeal to these fans.
This makes it sound like the book is negative and critical of the game, but that is not the case. Jacoby shares many wonderful stories about the game and her adopted team, the New York Mets. She sounds off about the designated hitter (hates it), baseball movies (doesn’t like “Field of Dreams” or Robert Redford cast as Roy Hobbs in “The Natural”) and why fans love the game the way they do (“…we love it precisely because it is not like life.”) Her stories, along with her suggestions for making the game better for all fans, are compelling reading that every person interested in the game of baseball will enjoy.

A quick and easy read that will make the reader think, “Why Baseball Matters” is the type of book that not only makes a critical examination of the game, it offers wonderful opportunities to not only attract new fans, but also illustrate why fans of the game love it the way they do with a passion not easily seen in other sports.

I wish to thank Yale University Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/201...

[Paco Alegría · Rating 4 out of 5]

Para verdaderos enamorados del baseball, como yo, resulta un libro imprescindible. Para cualquiera otro es un libro extraordinariamente interesante que nos hace entender porque el baseball es un deporte tan interesante, y sobre todo, por que importa tanto que lo siga siendo.

[Norman Styers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good writer - confident, opinionated, fair, self-aware.

[Andrew Szalay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacoby's Why Baseball Matters is timely and gives fans a clear call to action. I highly recommend anyone trying to make sense of the criticisms levied against baseball to read this quick yet well reasoned and researched book.

Jacoby evaluates all of the contemporary complaints against baseball -- games are too long and boring, sexist, racist, dated, and an old man's game -- and puts them in context. She separates the game of baseball from the flawed business of baseball and shows how the game remains true, and illustrates how America's social problems all seem to work its way into the fans' and owners' lives within the stadium, conflating our problems of our times with baseball.

Baseball, in fact, has changed very little in 150 years, and Jacoby concludes why those that love the game need to focus on it and teach it to younger fans.

[James R · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s actually not until the last chapter that Jacoby actually directly speculates on why baseball matters, but, beyond that it brings back nostalgic memories of times with her grandfather in his bar where she learned to love the game, the rest of her explanations are a muddle of metaphor and worrying about the fan base disappearing. I happen to enjoy baseball, but according to Jacoby, that’s because I’m old, white, male, and overweight. I’m represent the dead lost past of the fan base. Most of the book is a denigration of me and my ilk and a lament that more younger women aren’t being taught to appreciate and enjoy the game. She’s a purist who doesn’t want anything about the game to change. She spends considerable time arguing against as many of the ideas of how to speed up the game as she can while arguing the length of the game is not the problem. I actually agree with her, but tired of her arguments, because I wanted to read her thoughts about why the game matters. I actually also think baseball does matter but find my reasons hard to articulate and hoped she could help with that. And on that score was greatly disappointed. Like many book titles this one is designed to sell the book not necessarily accurately describe what the book is about. Although she makes some good points about why the fan base is shrinking she leaves out many more relevant reasons. Things that could actually be changed, but probably won’t be. For example, the baseball season is much too long. A one hundred game season would be plenty. It would make individual games have more significance for fans and players alike. The pros and cons of that idea would be worth a few pages. For a purist like Jacoby I’m surprised she didn’t include simple things like that. My point is not only did she not talk much about why baseball matters, she didn’t even do a thorough job of discussing how interest in the game could be increased.

[Mike Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to the audio version of this short book by Ms. Jacoby. The book highlights a number of issues facing baseball today including fans shorter attention span, baseball diversity, and the cost of playing the game growing up.

Ms. Jacoby did a good job outlining some issues that face the game, but I failed to follow her logic on how to fix it. For example length of the games/fans attention span. She starts out by explaining that the games are long and millennial attention spans are short. Ms. Jacoby goes on to argue that we shouldn’t worrying about shortening the game rather just teach the new fans about the game. Well if the younger generations attention spans are short, then we do need to worrying up shorting the game.

Another problem was her diversity position. She at one point bashed the game as not trying to include women and minorities enough, then later praises the game for their efforts to promote baseball in poor urban areas to minorities.

I felt Ms. Jacoby was trying to outline pluses and minuses for each argument on the issues. It just didn’t work for me. I can appreciate her fandom, as it is evident through this book she is a huge baseball fan. I just can’t recommend this book to anyone. It just seems too muddled to me. I would recommend something else to quench your baseball thirst.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10

This is clearly a book developed from passion, rather than an actual argument. Indeed, I often found myself asking what the point was, or what Jacoby was attempting to persuade her readers of. However, this is most likely a small-minded perspective, as Jacoby appears to want to share her love of the game with an audience who is slowly shrinking from it. This is the thrust of the book, the author attempts to share her enduring passion with a sport that seems to be losing touch with a younger generation. She spends a little time attempting to rectify the situation without damaging the integrity of the game, but ultimately this appeal falls a little flat.

Jacoby is a gifted writer, but from my two encounters with her, I have found that she fails to make any enduring impact with her audience. She makes a variety of disconnected points, with little to no practical value. I may end up reading more of her in future, but it will be with a sense of exasperation, as I will constantly expect her to preform more closely in line with where I think she could.

[Ryan Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK Boomer...

You know when someone says "I am not racist, but..." that you are about to hear something pretty racist. This book is over 200 pages of "I am not going to complain about how much better baseball was 50 years ago and yell at kids to get off my lawn but..."

Some of the anecdotes are enjoyable, and I appreciate the discussion that nostalgia has about the "glory days" of baseball, but Jacoby looses me a bit too much with her continued insistence that "kids these days" are at fault for baseball's problems because they are too stupid and don't have the attention spans to appreciate the game.

I enjoyed her discussion about the ballooning cost of youth sports programs, and the impact this has on creating fans of the game, but it was a short lived section to a just ok book.

[Tanner · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, but it just isn't quite right. I resent any author who uses a gloss of academia to cover an argument no more complex than "kids these days and their phones, right?" Particularly because, in my anecdotal experience, my sixty-something dad is far more likely to pull out his phone in a ballpark than I am. Either a deeper academic approach or a broader interview approach would be more convincing. The book isn't helped by the fact that Jacoby really pulls her punches and saves her positive ideas for an epilogue.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolutely love the thesis of the book, was instantly interested when I read Samantha Powers’ Washington Post Sunday piece and the prologue was extremely promising. But ironically, for a book whose thesis is about the concentration and focus required for baseball, this short piece is utterly littered with random tangents that distract from the flow and core argument of the book. Would have been much better off as an article or at least a structure for the book as a whole that made a longer well-structured argument.

[Hunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok. The epilogue specifically dropped it at least a point though... Some of the suggestions were fine, but then she goes "English fluency should be required to play in MLB" which was just utterly wtf. Expanded on, the suggestion is more that MLB needs to improve what English instruction is offered to non-native speaking players while in the pipeline, but... there is a massive fucking difference in the various ways to phrase it, and that was just absolutely "What the f--k! Did you read what you wrote there!?"

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baseball is in a time of crisis. Millennials and post-millennials find it more challenging to watch a three-hour game because of attention spans that have been shortened by smartphones and tablets. Fewer African-Americans are watching and playing in the MLB than in previous decades. Women fans seem to be an untapped audience. Overall, baseball is losing out to other major sports. Fantasy sports create fans who cheer for their players but may care less about an actual team in real life. What is a league to do? Why Baseball Matters (a bit of a misnomer of a book title) investigates these questions.

The powers-that-be seem to be stuck on the idea that game time must be shortened. Therefore, play clocks have been added, replays have been restricted, etc. The minor league has even tried starting a runner at second in extra inning games. Jacoby argues, however, that all of this is missing the point. All of these actions may only shave a few minutes off a game. No significant change has been made. Besides, all of this is treating a symptom, not the cause of the problem. The problem is that fans in the 21st century have shorter attention spans and are constantly distracted while watching. (Jacoby also mentions other interesting suggestions like having a defensive team and offensive team [like football] or rotating positions [like volleyball]).

Some stadiums have attempted to insert more entertainment into the live game with kiss cams, games on the big screen, pools, rocking climbing walls, restaurants, shopping, etc. Jacoby wonders if a stadium can do something to educate the fans about the subtleties of the game rather than contribute to the problem of distraction.

At the end of the day, Jacoby is not a baseball purist that demands rigid adherence to a tradition. She admits that baseball has had to reinvent itself after the invention of new technologies (radio, TV), social changes (integration), and scandals (the '94 strike, the steroid era). Baseball will continue to evolve and will survive.

I really enjoyed reading this book. However, it seemed really disjointed. Jacoby seemed to rehash a lot of the same ideas (Millennial, African-American, Hispanic, and women fandom) without any clear direction. For that, Why Baseball Matters is a 4-start instead of a 5-star read.

[Paul Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

FROM 2018, A volume in the Yale University Press's "Why X Matters" series. Judging from the other chosen topics in the series--poetry, the museum, dance (the high art kind), Reinhold Niebuhr, Lionel Trilling, the New Deal, the Dreyfus Affair--the secret name of the series must be "Why X Still Matters Even Though It Gets a Lot Less Attention Than It Used to." I have read only this volume in the series, but I would venture that the slightly defensive, somewhat curmudgeonly note audible in Jacoby's book recurs in other contributions to the series. (In the case of Adam Kirsch's book on Lionel Trilling, that note is probably a low hum from beginning to end.)

Jacoby concedes that some of the complaints about baseball have merit--that it is has lost the interest of Blacks in the USA, that it is not doing enough to interest the young, that it continues to exclude women from visible roles. She is decidedly testy, though, about the complaint that it is too slow and that games take too long.

All the suggestions for speeding things up, like the pitch clock or starting extra innings with a free runner on second base, she dismisses with what Albert O. Hirschman, in The Rhetoric of Reaction, called the "Futility Thesis" and the "Jeopardy Thesis"--that is, arguments that the proposed change (1) would not achieve its end and (2) would damage baseball.

Five years on from the year she published her book, with both of those rule changes now in effect, I wonder...does she still think they are wrong? Most fans seem to have accepted them, and most of those I talk to are a bit grateful that games are running closer to two-and-a-half hours than three.

There is plenty to like in the book, though. Jacoby explains the genesis of her love of baseball well and does a fine job of explaining the uniqueness of the sport (leaning a bit on Roger Angell). I loved her account of the climactic game of the 1986 National League Championship Series. She wasn't there--she was watching it on TV, as I was--but the peculiar rhythms of remote spectatorship are certainly a part of baseball, and she renders them beautifully.

[Rodney Crainer · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, let me say how refreshing it was to hear the opinions on the current state of baseball from a new voice. I have heard endless rants from old, conservative, white men about the doom and gloom that baseball faces and how it can’t survive because of how twisted our next generations are. Instead hearing from a liberal female who loves the game, seemingly, as much or more than anyone, was a welcome retreat.

Except it wasn’t because, man, Susan sounded almost exactly like those crusty old white dudes.

I was appreciative of tidbits in this book such as the sharing that African American players on major league rosters hasn’t plummeted as much as reported mostly due to the fact that those counts used to lump Latin-born players with darker skin into the percentage. I also liked her take on baseball never truly having had a pure and pristine era, much like all of human history.

But outside of some of that, you could call this “Anecdotal Research: The Book.” Susan expects the reader to take the two teenagers she spoke with who are on their phones more than you would expect and would never watch baseball as proof that phones, video games, fantasy sports, and (I’m not kidding) AMC’s “Better Call Saul” are reasons why this sport might be doomed. She talks to two guys who play fantasy baseball but don’t watch the games and presents that as the norm with no research available.

Honestly, where she failed is that she wasn’t cynical enough. Baseball won’t reach “kids these days” because they don’t actually want to do that. They want to make as much money as they can THIS season. They have an eye on the future, but they won’t do a single thing that shaves a cent off revenue to accomplish uncertain future objectives.

And honestly, where she failed is that she’s too cynical. Baseball is not going anywhere. Maybe in 20 years franchises won’t sell for 2 billion dollars, but not selling teams for BILLIONS is not the same as spiraling into anonymity and closing the doors of baseball cathedrals. It’s fine. It may become more niche, it may be more hockey than football… but it’s fine.

36 days till opening day!

[Zach Koenig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baseball is at a sort of crossroads right now. Though in no danger of dying off completely, it does sit on a precipice of potential viewership issues. The big reason for this? The average viewer of a baseball game (in person or on television) is nearly 60 years old.

What Susan Jacoby does in "Why Baseball Matters", then, is provide first some insights, and then some suggestions, on what baseball truly is, what differentiates it from other sports, and how perhaps the best way to proceed is.

I found this book to be one of the most keen I've ever read at expressing the state of baseball past, present, and future. The main thesis, if you will, is that baseball is a longford game in a shorthand society, if you will, or in other words baseball can really only be appreciated through sustained attention in order to understand its inner workings. That is a big problem for current generations, whose minds seem to work almost the exact opposite (short blips from here to there).

Instead of getting caught up in pointing the finger or tossing out useless generation-gap statements, however, Jacoby really digs into the hard research on these subjects to discover just what exactly is transpiring and how it can be remedied for the sport to successfully thrive into the future.

The ironic thing about a book like this, of course, is that it will most likely to little besides "preach to the choir" in terms of its readership. That is part of Jacoby's argument too, however, as she puts some of the onus on "older" fans to teach the game to youngsters in order to "keep the wheel turning".

Overall, just some great insights about the sport of baseball here, and a lot of notions that will be kicking around in my brain for days and weeks to come.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second baseball book of the year, read as my World Champion Red Sox continue to kind of stink this year. Why does that happen? They have the same team as last year! Arrgh.
Jacoby grew up a White Sox fan and became a Mets fan, and mostly what she would like to talk about are the horribly misguided ways that MLB thinks they might draw more fans to the game. I was totally with her on this. The powers that be think the games are too long, and that's why they can't draw young fans, and it is so silly. Jacoby interviews young people, to make what should be a really obvious point - kids are distracted these days, and the idea that they are going to change their minds about baseball because the game is two and a half instead of three hours long is ridiculous. She puts it very well towards the end - no business ever succeeded by abandoning what made it unique in the first place. Adding pitch clocks and this crazy idea of putting a runner on second in extra innings...come on. You're going to shave what, five or ten minutes off a game? Who cares?
Jacoby also made me think about the games that have seared themselves in my brain, the ones where I did not care that they went on forever. For her it was Mets/Astros 1986, that game that went to extras in the NLCS. For me it was Red Sox/Yankees Game 5 2004, the one that went to 14 innings and it seemed like the Yankees were sure to score every inning (passed balls!) and then Ortiz's epic at bat and walk off single. Oh man what a great game that was. The way you draw fans is with games like that.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly I did not need to read a book entitled ‘Why Baseball Matters’ because, to me, it matters a great deal. But given the details in this book, I find that I’m in an ever-shrinking minority and that most of my peers have either lost interest in the national pastime or never had an interest to begin with. I will say that I do, occasionally, find myself ‘not in the game,’ but I still have a passion for issues between the lines and, though my statistics abilities are subpar, I still delight in the box score and the incredible minutiae of stats that forms the history of Major League Baseball. All of this is to say that Jacoby has written an excellent book detailing what is happening to Baseball and how it doesn’t necessarily need to be fixed (at least not in the ways that are being currently tried and/or suggested), rather that folks need to be reintroduced to the game and engaged with it on its cerebral and leisurely levels.