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Infinite Baseball: Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark
Baseball is a strange sport: it consists of long periods in which little seems to be happening, punctuated by high-energy outbursts of rapid fire activity. Because of this, despite ever greater profits, Major League Baseball is bent on finding ways to shorten games, and to tailor baseball to today's shorter attention spans. But for the true fan, baseball is always compelling to watch -and intellectually fascinating. It's superficially slow-pace is an opportunity to participate in the distinctive thinking practice that defines the game. If baseball is boring, it's boring the way philosophy is boring: not because there isn't a lot going on, but because the challenge baseball poses is making sense of it all.
In this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva No� explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score: a score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation.
Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths. The book ranges from the nature of umpiring and the role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance enhancing drugs. Throughout, Noe's observations are surprising and provocative.
Infinite Baseball is a book for the true baseball fan.
In this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva No� explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score: a score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation.
Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths. The book ranges from the nature of umpiring and the role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance enhancing drugs. Throughout, Noe's observations are surprising and provocative.
Infinite Baseball is a book for the true baseball fan.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published April 1, 2019
32 people are currently reading
982 people want to read
About the author
Alva Noë
18 books117 followersAlva Noë (born 1964) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. The focus of his work is the theory of perception and consciousness. In addition to these problems in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, he is interested in phenomenology, the theory of art, Wittgenstein, and the origins of analytic philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
August 3, 2020
Well, phooey. Infinite Baseball is a disappointment.
We like to read about baseball, of course, because we love the game. Baseball means something to each of us individually. It's personal, our relationship with it measured in degrees of affection and nostalgia. The image of fathers playing catch with sons in the yard or Michael Costa describing eloquently how it's a game about always coming home, both so movingly given to us by the Ken Burns documentary on baseball, strike a chord with us and are reasons we're so bound up with the game.
I think one of the problems with Alva Noe's book, which also references Ken Burns, is that it's a cold, flinty look at the game. We love books in love with baseball which tell us why we're in love with it, that explain how baseball adds value to our lives. We like to be reminded what the game means to us because it means a lot. Noe, a philosopher, writes about what the game means philosophically. So he describes baseball as a forensic sport bound by laws. He describes baseball as a game which forces us to assign praise and blame for every action. He tells us baseball is about responsibility. Did that batter earn the hit or was a fielder's quick decision involved somehow? Are a pitcher's unearned runs truly unearned? He considers baseball infinite in that it's more a "domain" of life than a game, "a field of thought." Every component of baseball is necessary to it, even the umpires considered as players in the game's tableau, though they enforce the forensic laws rather than becoming part of the game's narrative. Noe discusses the nature of language by relating baseball to it. When he writes about religion he writes about Little League. Time after time he tries to illustrate what he's writing with examples of his personal and lifelong experiences with baseball (he's a Mets fan), but it seems a forced love.
The book is oddly bifurcated. There's a long "Preface" in which he lays out his ideas on baseball's narrative constructed around praise and blame, the usefulnesses of scoring games, and the judgment of umpires not always agreeing with the batter's box and why. This "Preface" contains intelligent, even wise, perceptions of baseball elegantly presented. The body of the book falls sharply in quality. It's 32 brief essays expressing his opinions on such topics as the value of instant replays and why Tommy John surgery should be looked at the same way as steroid use. Noe writes as a philosopher but tries to tie in his love for the game. However,part of his book addresses the charge against baseball as boring. He writes, probably correctly, that those who're bored by it don't really appreciate the busy swarm of thinking and maneuvering going on in the game they're watching. And yet he's given us a baseball book in which there isn't enough baseball on the page to hold our attention.
Writing good reviews here at Goodreads can be challenging sometimes. Writing bad reviews not so much--dissing is easy. Some books make it easier than others.
Sometimes we have a nagging feeling something is wonky. I've corrected it--the sportscaster mentioned in the 1st paragraph is Bob Costas, not Michael Costa. Of course.
We like to read about baseball, of course, because we love the game. Baseball means something to each of us individually. It's personal, our relationship with it measured in degrees of affection and nostalgia. The image of fathers playing catch with sons in the yard or Michael Costa describing eloquently how it's a game about always coming home, both so movingly given to us by the Ken Burns documentary on baseball, strike a chord with us and are reasons we're so bound up with the game.
I think one of the problems with Alva Noe's book, which also references Ken Burns, is that it's a cold, flinty look at the game. We love books in love with baseball which tell us why we're in love with it, that explain how baseball adds value to our lives. We like to be reminded what the game means to us because it means a lot. Noe, a philosopher, writes about what the game means philosophically. So he describes baseball as a forensic sport bound by laws. He describes baseball as a game which forces us to assign praise and blame for every action. He tells us baseball is about responsibility. Did that batter earn the hit or was a fielder's quick decision involved somehow? Are a pitcher's unearned runs truly unearned? He considers baseball infinite in that it's more a "domain" of life than a game, "a field of thought." Every component of baseball is necessary to it, even the umpires considered as players in the game's tableau, though they enforce the forensic laws rather than becoming part of the game's narrative. Noe discusses the nature of language by relating baseball to it. When he writes about religion he writes about Little League. Time after time he tries to illustrate what he's writing with examples of his personal and lifelong experiences with baseball (he's a Mets fan), but it seems a forced love.
The book is oddly bifurcated. There's a long "Preface" in which he lays out his ideas on baseball's narrative constructed around praise and blame, the usefulnesses of scoring games, and the judgment of umpires not always agreeing with the batter's box and why. This "Preface" contains intelligent, even wise, perceptions of baseball elegantly presented. The body of the book falls sharply in quality. It's 32 brief essays expressing his opinions on such topics as the value of instant replays and why Tommy John surgery should be looked at the same way as steroid use. Noe writes as a philosopher but tries to tie in his love for the game. However,part of his book addresses the charge against baseball as boring. He writes, probably correctly, that those who're bored by it don't really appreciate the busy swarm of thinking and maneuvering going on in the game they're watching. And yet he's given us a baseball book in which there isn't enough baseball on the page to hold our attention.
Writing good reviews here at Goodreads can be challenging sometimes. Writing bad reviews not so much--dissing is easy. Some books make it easier than others.
Sometimes we have a nagging feeling something is wonky. I've corrected it--the sportscaster mentioned in the 1st paragraph is Bob Costas, not Michael Costa. Of course.
July 2, 2019
Alva Noe's Infinite Baseball: Notes From a Philosopher at the Ballpark sounds so intriguing. What you get, though, is a hodgepodge of previously published pieces with a tacked on introduction. By the time I got through the introduction, I was already getting disappointed. One theme he comes back to is that baseball is a game of responsibility--we're always trying to assign credit or blame for what happens. Such credit or blame ultimately takes the form of numbers, but baseball is in his eyes not a numbers game. It is this last argument that he has the most difficulty explaining and defending. In the intro, I kept stopping and thinking, "This isn't accurate." Some of the assertions in the intro:
--Baseball is an infinite game. Finite games, like chess, "can be simulated with computers" (6). This would come as some surprise to the many enthusiasts of Out of the Park Baseball, a hugely popular baseball simulation.
--Baseball is considered slow because "only explosive hits and big plays count as action" (22). No, baseball is considered slow because the length of time it takes to do the same things has risen quite a lot over time, 40 or so minutes on average during my lifetime.
--he argues that data should not be used to think about medical issues, such as breastfeeding, and so should also not be used to judge baseball. My own opinion is that this is terrible advice. He caps it off with the factually incorrect statement that with a pitcher, "the manager's decision to leave him in, or call on a relief pitcher, is not one that can be decided with the numbers" (25). Yes, human judgment is in there, but those decisions are fundamentally based on numbers.
--Baseball is different because kids model the stances of their favorite hitters (he puts pose in italics (27). Youth games are "rituals." How is this different from other sports? You know kids try to shoot like Steph Curry or do touchdown dances like their favorite receiver.
The intro lays out no framework, philosophical or otherwise, so my advice is to read the chapters, or better yet find the chapters in their original form online. He has some interesting insights into why steroids shouldn't be considered a problem for the Hall of Fame Well, actually, that's the main interesting thing. He asks whether any variety of medical assistance (even Tommy John surgery) should be considered unfair advantage. Fair questions, and worth asking. That would actually be a better basis for a philosophical discussion.
But for me, this book boiled down to a lot of unhappiness about sabermetrics. He mentions and criticizes Keith Law's book Smart Baseball but really just reinforces Law's main argument. I agree that Law's own take is too intentionally insulting, but his arguments are solid. Numbers don't tell us everything, but they are being used in creative and productive ways to understand current and future performance. Noé says you cannot use numbers to determine value, period (67). He ends with his own shot that underlines his lack of sabermetric understanding: "Want to know what happened on the field? You'd better take a look, and give it some thought" (67). Guess what: Law and everyone else who judges baseball players go to endless minor league games to scout, while using the numbers. If you ignore the data, you will lose.
My advice to Noé is to accept the fact that numbers are more important than he wants to believe, but that they do not mess with the beauty of baseball. And a 2.5 hour game is no less enjoyable and fulfilling than a 3.5 hour one. As someone who lives on the east coast and follows a west cost team, infinite baseball with games that start at 10:10 pm are awful.
From https://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2019...
--Baseball is an infinite game. Finite games, like chess, "can be simulated with computers" (6). This would come as some surprise to the many enthusiasts of Out of the Park Baseball, a hugely popular baseball simulation.
--Baseball is considered slow because "only explosive hits and big plays count as action" (22). No, baseball is considered slow because the length of time it takes to do the same things has risen quite a lot over time, 40 or so minutes on average during my lifetime.
--he argues that data should not be used to think about medical issues, such as breastfeeding, and so should also not be used to judge baseball. My own opinion is that this is terrible advice. He caps it off with the factually incorrect statement that with a pitcher, "the manager's decision to leave him in, or call on a relief pitcher, is not one that can be decided with the numbers" (25). Yes, human judgment is in there, but those decisions are fundamentally based on numbers.
--Baseball is different because kids model the stances of their favorite hitters (he puts pose in italics (27). Youth games are "rituals." How is this different from other sports? You know kids try to shoot like Steph Curry or do touchdown dances like their favorite receiver.
The intro lays out no framework, philosophical or otherwise, so my advice is to read the chapters, or better yet find the chapters in their original form online. He has some interesting insights into why steroids shouldn't be considered a problem for the Hall of Fame Well, actually, that's the main interesting thing. He asks whether any variety of medical assistance (even Tommy John surgery) should be considered unfair advantage. Fair questions, and worth asking. That would actually be a better basis for a philosophical discussion.
But for me, this book boiled down to a lot of unhappiness about sabermetrics. He mentions and criticizes Keith Law's book Smart Baseball but really just reinforces Law's main argument. I agree that Law's own take is too intentionally insulting, but his arguments are solid. Numbers don't tell us everything, but they are being used in creative and productive ways to understand current and future performance. Noé says you cannot use numbers to determine value, period (67). He ends with his own shot that underlines his lack of sabermetric understanding: "Want to know what happened on the field? You'd better take a look, and give it some thought" (67). Guess what: Law and everyone else who judges baseball players go to endless minor league games to scout, while using the numbers. If you ignore the data, you will lose.
My advice to Noé is to accept the fact that numbers are more important than he wants to believe, but that they do not mess with the beauty of baseball. And a 2.5 hour game is no less enjoyable and fulfilling than a 3.5 hour one. As someone who lives on the east coast and follows a west cost team, infinite baseball with games that start at 10:10 pm are awful.
From https://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2019...
February 25, 2020
Alva Noë is a philosopher and baseball fan. In Infinite Baseball, he ponders ethical and existential aspects of the game, including blame, credit, fandom, linguistics and much more. Noë also plumbs the role of performance-enhancing substances and how they compare with performance-enhancing surgeries. (He sees very little difference.) I’m still thinking about how his explanation that although baseball claims to have statistics that can be compared across more than a century of seasons, changes within the game make those comparisons not as valid as they might seem. For example, all of these issues significantly affect the purity of comparisons from different baseball eras: the exclusion of non-white players, the change in height of the pitcher’s mound, the use of “clean” balls, the number of games played, the frequency of Tommy John surgeries, and the use performance-enhancing substances. Noë’s perspective as a Mets fan provides colorful examples for his reasoning and explanations.
April 17, 2025
I was happy with this book at the beginning. It was written by a Mets fan and was looking at baseball from a unique angle. However when he said there is no difference in a player using PEDs with a player getting surgically repaired from an injury. He set up very poor strawman arguments to support his position, but he failed to recognize that a player recovered from surgery will play at the same level (if he's lucky) from before the surgery. The PED user is will surpass their previous performance. This is why it is cheating and should not be condoned. He defended Lance Armstrong's doping as just a smart training tactic. This is where he lost me. I would have rated it with 2 stars, but I gave him an extra one as a fellow Mets fan.
April 28, 2022
Dr. Noë writes an excellent philosophical interrogation of baseball. I particularly liked his take that baseball is a game of forensics, and that critics that state that baseball is boring and needs to be sped up are missing the fundamental part that makes baseball so intriguing: every action on the field can be investigated by the careful eye and contextualized. The baseball fan acts as a forensics expert, judging which player/condition/event led to success or failure; who can be blamed, and why?
His attempts to connect baseball to language and his arguments that many things in life are "baseball-like" fell flat for me. Many of our day to day activities require subjective judgments, this is core to our human experience, so his argument was not enlightening.
His attempts to connect baseball to language and his arguments that many things in life are "baseball-like" fell flat for me. Many of our day to day activities require subjective judgments, this is core to our human experience, so his argument was not enlightening.
July 23, 2025
I'm both a baseball fan and a philosopher. But somehow this never grabbed me.
The best part was his comparison of PEDs and Tommy John surgery, arguing that they are on a par morally. I thought his case was plausible and interesting.
On the other hand his comparison between baseball and language seemed like a stretch. And there was A LOT of repetition between essays--especially with the point that baseball is primarily a normative activity..
The best part was his comparison of PEDs and Tommy John surgery, arguing that they are on a par morally. I thought his case was plausible and interesting.
On the other hand his comparison between baseball and language seemed like a stretch. And there was A LOT of repetition between essays--especially with the point that baseball is primarily a normative activity..
November 17, 2019
Absolutely my kind of book! As infinite as it is, I didn’t want it to end! It won’t appeal to everyone, but if you love baseball and contemplating its meaning in the world at large, this will spark your thinking and light up your imagination.
June 23, 2024
The conclusions are (mostly) off, and the lines of argument are not so thoroughly considered. But it’s more disappointing because, for all his ideas, there’s so little joy on the page.
August 26, 2024
- the project of trying to write ourselves is important and ongoing
- much like curating a museum ; how to make it accessible through distractions
- a mets enjoyer
- the entire idea of it being law and therefore forensic vs my attention on parts of the game
- baseball is boring ; if you can relax and get bored you’re lucky
- organized religion a congregation built by practice
- the passionate conversation about baseball in written form
- it’s a thousand details it’s romantic, baseball is romantic ongoing media will not die ⚾️
- much like curating a museum ; how to make it accessible through distractions
- a mets enjoyer
- the entire idea of it being law and therefore forensic vs my attention on parts of the game
- baseball is boring ; if you can relax and get bored you’re lucky
- organized religion a congregation built by practice
- the passionate conversation about baseball in written form
- it’s a thousand details it’s romantic, baseball is romantic ongoing media will not die ⚾️
July 13, 2019
I don’t think I ever got over the fact that this guy spelled Joe Panik’s name wrong throughout one of the first essays. And no one else on the editorial staff caught it! Ugh. As a San Francisco Giants fan that left me butt-hurt. His metaphors were too overextended and I really disagree with a lot of his observations. I kind of expected this book to sound a lot like having a conversation with a friend with whom you share a love for baseball (a la some of the really great gems on Bleacher Report) but it was, for lack of better word, boring. Maybe that’s what he was going for since the ongoing joke is that baseball itself is boring?
May 2, 2019
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway, and wasn't sure what to expect. I am no fan of philosophy, but I love baseball. The chapters are short essays on various topics that make it easy to read. I don't always agree with the author's position, but what he writes is usually thought provoking. My favorite section was called "Making Peace With Our Cyborg Nature" It took on PED usage, Tommy John surgeries, and other techniques used to enhance or improve a player and how we determine what is acceptable and what isn't. Overall, I enjoyed this book and think other baseball fans would too.
March 14, 2020
Infinite Baseball is a series of brief philosophical essays on baseball. Although many of the ideas are interesting and engaging, the book suffers from repetitiveness. Similar scenarios are repeated, often with little variation in language, and certain facts, statistics, and conclusions are given again and again (and sometimes, again). Only baseball fans would find this book interesting, and this one found its redundancies frustrating to the brink of tedium.
July 11, 2020
Noe is a philosopher who happens to be a baseball fan. Like all ardent baseball fans, myself included, he takes it as a given that baseball is the sport most perfectly suited for philosophical speculation. The 3-4 page chapters of this book, most of which first appeared as newspaper columns, don’t build on each other. Rather, each is a discrete argument arising from an issue within the game, the game’s interaction with the society it both entertains and reflects, or a challenge to received notions of how things in baseball ought to be.
Perhaps the most controversial argument made in this book, which Noe returns to in a number of essays, is that the use of performance enhancing drugs should not be banned in baseball. He argues this by claiming that athletes do numerous things to turn their bodies into performance machines, including weight training, ingestion of healthy foods, extreme training regimens in low-oxygen conditions, Tommy John surgery, and the like. These measures are designed to maximize performance. How is that different from ingesting a steroid? Why is an operation legal but certain procedures like blood doping are not? Athletes have one goal - to win. Ruling that some means to achieve that end are legal and others are not seems arbitrary.
Another issue Noe confronts directly is the current attempt to speed up the game. He argues against it because baseball is a game of strategy where the natural rhythm of the confrontation between batter and pitcher is essential to the strategizing necessary. To speed it up is to turn it into something else. To the complaint that baseball is boring he says “so what?” Must everything in our lives be speeded up and condensed? The slow pace of baseball is entirely appropriate; it is we who need to “slow down and let baseball happen.”
Probably the most interesting set of chapters, to me, is the section called “keeping score.” Noe posits that baseball is “a forensic sport,” by which he means that every point of examination is an effort to apportion praise and blame. “...in baseball...the way you determine what happened is by making a judgement about who is responsible for what happened.” For example, whether the batter got a hit is a matter of determining whether he earned the base or was granted it because of an error by another, or a choice by another that has nothing to do with the batter’s own merit. Each decision in baseball this requires a forensic inquiry. This leads into a discussion of the matter of statistics, and keeping score. The scorecard is the official record of the game, the record of each forensic decision made throughout the contest. To truly understand what has happened in the game, one must keep score.
Perhaps the most controversial argument made in this book, which Noe returns to in a number of essays, is that the use of performance enhancing drugs should not be banned in baseball. He argues this by claiming that athletes do numerous things to turn their bodies into performance machines, including weight training, ingestion of healthy foods, extreme training regimens in low-oxygen conditions, Tommy John surgery, and the like. These measures are designed to maximize performance. How is that different from ingesting a steroid? Why is an operation legal but certain procedures like blood doping are not? Athletes have one goal - to win. Ruling that some means to achieve that end are legal and others are not seems arbitrary.
Another issue Noe confronts directly is the current attempt to speed up the game. He argues against it because baseball is a game of strategy where the natural rhythm of the confrontation between batter and pitcher is essential to the strategizing necessary. To speed it up is to turn it into something else. To the complaint that baseball is boring he says “so what?” Must everything in our lives be speeded up and condensed? The slow pace of baseball is entirely appropriate; it is we who need to “slow down and let baseball happen.”
Probably the most interesting set of chapters, to me, is the section called “keeping score.” Noe posits that baseball is “a forensic sport,” by which he means that every point of examination is an effort to apportion praise and blame. “...in baseball...the way you determine what happened is by making a judgement about who is responsible for what happened.” For example, whether the batter got a hit is a matter of determining whether he earned the base or was granted it because of an error by another, or a choice by another that has nothing to do with the batter’s own merit. Each decision in baseball this requires a forensic inquiry. This leads into a discussion of the matter of statistics, and keeping score. The scorecard is the official record of the game, the record of each forensic decision made throughout the contest. To truly understand what has happened in the game, one must keep score.
March 14, 2023
On one hand, I really rather enjoyed this book. The chapters are short and pithy. Noe’s musings about baseball are thought-provoking; and his love of baseball shines through out. His idea that baseball is all about deciding who’s responsible for what, left me thinking about baseball from a new perspective. The relation of baseball to language and linguistics was intriguing. Anyone interested in baseball will find the book charming.
On the other hand, I found myself annoyed and disappointed at times with the book. Clearly aware of the philosophy of sport literature, the author makes almost no mention or reference to it. So many of the topics he dives into he treats as novel and original, as if he’s the first to consider these topics philosophically, when they are well-trodden in the literature. Noe has some interesting insights, but these too could have been better had he engaged with the writings by philosophers of sport.
Noe is explicit that he’s not trying to write a philosophy of sport book; that his is more the musings of a philosopher obsessed with baseball. And there is much in the book that fits this vein. But much of the book is also engaged in philosophical analysis of arguments about topics central to sport. As such, it is, necessarily, a work in philosophy of sport. And on that front, one has to grade it down a bit because it doesn’t enter the dialogue where those conversations are taking place. To strain the metaphor, he’s swinging the bat, but not stepping into the batter’s box to face the pitcher.
On the other hand, I found myself annoyed and disappointed at times with the book. Clearly aware of the philosophy of sport literature, the author makes almost no mention or reference to it. So many of the topics he dives into he treats as novel and original, as if he’s the first to consider these topics philosophically, when they are well-trodden in the literature. Noe has some interesting insights, but these too could have been better had he engaged with the writings by philosophers of sport.
Noe is explicit that he’s not trying to write a philosophy of sport book; that his is more the musings of a philosopher obsessed with baseball. And there is much in the book that fits this vein. But much of the book is also engaged in philosophical analysis of arguments about topics central to sport. As such, it is, necessarily, a work in philosophy of sport. And on that front, one has to grade it down a bit because it doesn’t enter the dialogue where those conversations are taking place. To strain the metaphor, he’s swinging the bat, but not stepping into the batter’s box to face the pitcher.
August 18, 2019
This was a quick and fun read. The author's main premise is that the true fan (and participant) views baseball not only in terms of who won, but how to assign credit or blame for the actions observed. Hit, or error? Sacrifice bunt, or bunt for a base? Earned, or unearned run?
He also feels that baseball is not boring for those who understand what is really happening and care about the above questions. Baseball fans will enjoy this book. Others will, well, find it boring. But it's unlikely they would pick it up to begin with.
The author spends a lot of time looking at the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and wondering why trying to enhance performance with them is considered so fundamentally different than enhancing performance through surgical or other means.
One criticism of this book is that it was compiled from a series of essays he did for NPR. Consequently, he repeats his points in a number of chapters. That's one reason the book is so quick – you can skip over some pages once you realize he's making the same point as earlier (especially about PEDs).
I was hoping for some deeper discussion of the philosophy of baseball, but the framework imposed by those short essays limited the scale of his arguments.
He also feels that baseball is not boring for those who understand what is really happening and care about the above questions. Baseball fans will enjoy this book. Others will, well, find it boring. But it's unlikely they would pick it up to begin with.
The author spends a lot of time looking at the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and wondering why trying to enhance performance with them is considered so fundamentally different than enhancing performance through surgical or other means.
One criticism of this book is that it was compiled from a series of essays he did for NPR. Consequently, he repeats his points in a number of chapters. That's one reason the book is so quick – you can skip over some pages once you realize he's making the same point as earlier (especially about PEDs).
I was hoping for some deeper discussion of the philosophy of baseball, but the framework imposed by those short essays limited the scale of his arguments.
December 15, 2020
Baseball occupies a unique place in American sports. It's one of the few that's truly an American creation; it is quintessentially linked to the nation's heritage. And our summers.
As Noe points out, there's far more writing about baseball — memoirs (even by the likes of Doris Kearns Goodwin), novels, scholarship, etc. — than most other professional athletic endeavors combined. Why is that? Noe argues that it's because baseball is so much more human than other sports. It's a battle of wills between individuals — pitcher and batter, most often — in which heroes and goats are instantly made, usually in the same moment.
This is a short collection of short essays. At times, it gets a bit too philosophical for my tastes. But in general, Noe shares some ideas about the game that generally made me go, "Huh, I've never thought of it that way." He argues that Tommy John surgery and steroids are basically the same thing. He writes that baseball's boring nature is part of what makes it so enjoyable and even vital in our fast-paced world. He muses on the beauty of keeping score by hand.
If you enjoy America's pastime, Infinite Baseball is a very fun little book, even if it delves just a little too much into heady philosophy at a couple points.
As Noe points out, there's far more writing about baseball — memoirs (even by the likes of Doris Kearns Goodwin), novels, scholarship, etc. — than most other professional athletic endeavors combined. Why is that? Noe argues that it's because baseball is so much more human than other sports. It's a battle of wills between individuals — pitcher and batter, most often — in which heroes and goats are instantly made, usually in the same moment.
This is a short collection of short essays. At times, it gets a bit too philosophical for my tastes. But in general, Noe shares some ideas about the game that generally made me go, "Huh, I've never thought of it that way." He argues that Tommy John surgery and steroids are basically the same thing. He writes that baseball's boring nature is part of what makes it so enjoyable and even vital in our fast-paced world. He muses on the beauty of keeping score by hand.
If you enjoy America's pastime, Infinite Baseball is a very fun little book, even if it delves just a little too much into heady philosophy at a couple points.
December 25, 2021
As part of my effort to get back into my passion for baseball from earlier decades, I had high hopes for Infinite Baseball. The subtitle is "Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark." I should have read it more literally. I thought it would be a book about baseball as philosophy, but Noe, it was a book about a philosophy professor's opinions about baseball. Which is fine except that the author has about six of them which he repeats ad nauseum over close to 200 pages.
Among other words of wisdom which seem to convey little or nothing, "We don't like our sports because they're great. They are great because we like them." Here's another gem: "Like Hollywood, baseball is much more the source of the images in terms of which we understand outselves, for better or worse, than it is a record thereof." Wait, what?
There is included a bibliography which promises to be more of a guide in pursuing my mission. And I did get a few factoids out of the book, like when the "live ball" era started and the role of the official scorekeeper. But overall, a disappointment. I hope the author does follow up with a book about the philosophy of baseball.
Among other words of wisdom which seem to convey little or nothing, "We don't like our sports because they're great. They are great because we like them." Here's another gem: "Like Hollywood, baseball is much more the source of the images in terms of which we understand outselves, for better or worse, than it is a record thereof." Wait, what?
There is included a bibliography which promises to be more of a guide in pursuing my mission. And I did get a few factoids out of the book, like when the "live ball" era started and the role of the official scorekeeper. But overall, a disappointment. I hope the author does follow up with a book about the philosophy of baseball.
August 17, 2019
I am now apparently a sucker for new books about baseball - at least giving them a try from the local public library. I didn't spend any of my $$ on this.
This is a collection of essays about conundrums in the author's thinking about baseball. It starts out with what I would consider to be the "usual suspect" type topics, such as "do we need to speed up baseball?" I was engaged enough to continue reading until I got to the discussion of PED usage by baseball players, when the author argues (more or less) that it could simplify things to just let the players dope. His thinking about this is OK as far as it goes, but he says nothing about the labor relations aspects of this - in other words, if PEDs were OK, exactly how would that fit into a player's relationship with team management?
Having read various memoirs by cyclists from the bad old days of Lance Armstrong's success, when doping among bicycle racers was so prevalent as to almost be legal, I think it is clear how much of a problem this would be.
So I stopped reading at that point. Back to the library.
This is a collection of essays about conundrums in the author's thinking about baseball. It starts out with what I would consider to be the "usual suspect" type topics, such as "do we need to speed up baseball?" I was engaged enough to continue reading until I got to the discussion of PED usage by baseball players, when the author argues (more or less) that it could simplify things to just let the players dope. His thinking about this is OK as far as it goes, but he says nothing about the labor relations aspects of this - in other words, if PEDs were OK, exactly how would that fit into a player's relationship with team management?
Having read various memoirs by cyclists from the bad old days of Lance Armstrong's success, when doping among bicycle racers was so prevalent as to almost be legal, I think it is clear how much of a problem this would be.
So I stopped reading at that point. Back to the library.
March 25, 2020
Really a 4.5 but Goodreads STILL doesn't have 1/2 stars.
Full disclosure: I 💙🧡💙 baseball. I also miss baseball tremendously. Anyhow, Infinite Baseball gave me just what I was looking for. It delves into the cross generational aspects of the game, the beauty of the game, the analysis (sometimes over analysis) of the game, the chess like thought processes that require thinking ahead 2 and 3 moves, not to mention the current day criticisms of the game.
But most of all it's a reminder that the game is always there, pretty much the same as it was for your dad, his dad and so on. Until this year at least.
Added bonus, which I did not know until I was well into the book, the author is a diehard Mets fan, so there's that aspect of forever hoping attached to game as well.
Might've been a full 5 stars except that I did find it a bit repetitive. But anyhow, i must read for all baseball fans who are chomping at the bit for an actual 2020 season to happen.
Full disclosure: I 💙🧡💙 baseball. I also miss baseball tremendously. Anyhow, Infinite Baseball gave me just what I was looking for. It delves into the cross generational aspects of the game, the beauty of the game, the analysis (sometimes over analysis) of the game, the chess like thought processes that require thinking ahead 2 and 3 moves, not to mention the current day criticisms of the game.
But most of all it's a reminder that the game is always there, pretty much the same as it was for your dad, his dad and so on. Until this year at least.
Added bonus, which I did not know until I was well into the book, the author is a diehard Mets fan, so there's that aspect of forever hoping attached to game as well.
Might've been a full 5 stars except that I did find it a bit repetitive. But anyhow, i must read for all baseball fans who are chomping at the bit for an actual 2020 season to happen.
January 2, 2022
This book is just not good. The "philosophy" comes across as trite and at other times making more out of something than warranted, presumably to flesh out what's already a thin book. I wasn't a fan of some of his most questionable takes, such as saying the Oakland As have a great ballpark. He does qualify it a bit, but their stadium is a horrific dungeon, an ugly concrete fortress which is cold, soulless, and - on game days, with the crowd in full voice - frightening. That last point I can attest to, having attended a game against the Yankees, where half the crowd were New York supporters, so every single play was met with a terrible cacophony of echoing and re-echoing shouts.
Also, legalize PEDS? Does he know the damage that steroids do, physically? The danger that someone in "roid rage" presents to themselves and others?
Also, legalize PEDS? Does he know the damage that steroids do, physically? The danger that someone in "roid rage" presents to themselves and others?
Read
August 6, 2024as a former philosophy major and current baseball fan, I was very excited when I found this book in my new local indie. if it had been half the length, it would have been one of my favorite books of the year. in the first half, Noe does pop philosophy *right,* advancing a coherent, interesting, and personally very satisfying set of arguments about the nature of the game. unfortunately, by the time we turn to his thoughts on doping, the writing begins to suffer, and the latter third of the book struggles to find the plot, throwing together a set of essays with little consistency on topic beyond their more-or-less tenuous connection to baseball and at times veering into platitude. alas. still worth reading for the first half.
August 2, 2021
It's interesting and it says many things I agree with, especially regarding the very fuzzy lines between things like Tommy John surgery and PEDs. But the episodic nature of the essays can make it extremely repetitive as he brings the reader up to speed each time with the basic argument. I listened to it in audiobook format and the narrator wasn't doing much for me either.
I did very much like the notion of baseball as a forensic game. It struck a chord for me in its relation to the law in particular.
I did very much like the notion of baseball as a forensic game. It struck a chord for me in its relation to the law in particular.
August 20, 2025
I have often heard that baseball is a thinking mans game, and this book really points that out. It is a compilation of essays that for the most part are an enjoyable read, and I agree with them. It would be nice to see an update as many changes - some that were brought up in the book have occurred. I also agree the Coliseum was a great venue - I did get to go to a game there in the As last season. My only complaint was the surrounding area. Oakland could have worked over the years to make that a better place.
How did this book find me? It was in the Audible+ catalog until August 26.
How did this book find me? It was in the Audible+ catalog until August 26.
May 26, 2019
I wanted to give this book to a baseball fan friend of mine as a gift (who is a philosopher as well). Just in case, I read a kindle version of it beforehand. I saved myself an embarrassment. I was extremely disappointed by its superficial nature, shortness, repetitiveness, and lack of any new insights. Not to mention the sentimentality at the end. I guess every man reaches that age at some point…Well, it’s better than a book on midlife crisis, at least.
July 23, 2021
This book was a series of essays devoted to various aspects of the game. All of them were good. Some of them were great. The overarching theory - that baseball is forensic, and a game dedicated to assigning credit or blame - is true, I think. I really enjoyed the section on keeping score. Not sure if I can agree with the author's opinion on the use of performance enhancing drugs, but he was very persuasive and thought provoking. He's a pretty good work also.
August 24, 2023
El filosofo Alva Noë escribe sobre el rey de los deportes, el beisbol. Cada capitulo es un ensayo independiente en el que explora distintos aspectos del juego y defiende su atemporalidad, su posibilidad de reflexión sobre la vida y sus tradiciones. También contiene ensayos que pueden ser controversiales por ejemplo, haciendo una defensa del dopaje vis a vis las cirugías que se realizan entre jóvenes para mejorar su desempeño al pichar (la famosa Tommy Jones)
June 8, 2024
Mostly repetitive pretentious drivel.
This could’ve been really good as a well written essay. Instead it just kept on, mostly just blathering about the stuff he liked about baseball and postulating that the fact that he likes it somehow proves that it’s good. There are nuggets of interesting thoughts here but not enough to need to read. TBH I wouldn’t have finished if it wasn’t pretty short. Not worth your time.
This could’ve been really good as a well written essay. Instead it just kept on, mostly just blathering about the stuff he liked about baseball and postulating that the fact that he likes it somehow proves that it’s good. There are nuggets of interesting thoughts here but not enough to need to read. TBH I wouldn’t have finished if it wasn’t pretty short. Not worth your time.
May 23, 2019
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. My brother-in-law is a huge fan of the Phillies and has an interest in baseball stadiums. I gave this book to him for his birthday. He immediately started reading it and shared some of his favorite parts of it with us. It was the perfect gift for him!
April 14, 2019
Full review to come, but I haven’t truly connected with a book this much in a while.
May 17, 2019
I enjoyed this book. The author shared a lot of his thoughts about baseball and compared it with many different life factors. Great reading for baseball fans.
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