SSoP Podcast Episode 71 — Baseball Diamond: Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

There’s nothing else quite like a night at the ballpark, especially when the light and temperature hit just right. The air is soft, the crowd is genial. You’ve got a hot dog in one hand and an icy-cold drink in the other. Your only job? Sit there, take in the action, and occasionally join in a cheer or shout at the ump.

Since the 1860s, baseball has been called ‘America’s pastime.’ During times of strife — the Civil War, the Great Depression, the World Wars — baseball provided escapism and a sense of normalcy. It’s always been seen as a reflection of American attitudes and values: The game requires cooperation and self-sacrifice — and like America, baseball loves a maverick. Baseball is also democratic: Just about anybody can play just about anywhere if they’ve got an open space, a bat, and a ball. As a spectator, even if you don’t know all the rules, you can still recognize the elation of a stolen base or a home run.

In this episode, we take a virtual tour of some of the remarkable ballparks around the US, meet the most eccentric man in baseball, delight in players’ excellent nicknames, and wax poetic about popcorn. Then we recommend great books that took us inside the stadium on the page, including a sweetly funny epistolary novel that sneaks up on you, a love letter to the unsung catcher, a 1920s mystery starring the Cincinnati Reds, a closer look at pitching, and a literary mashup of campus novel, baseball story, and rom-com.

Here are the books about baseball we recommend on the show:

• Last Days of Summer: A Novel by Steve Kluger

• The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game by Tim Brown

• The Cincinnati Red Stalkings by Troy Soos

• K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner

• The Art of Fielding: A Novel by Chad Harbach

Books, Transcript, and More

For a complete roundup of all the books we recommend, plus a full transcript and the other cool stuff we talked about, visit the Episode 71 show notes.

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Top image courtesy of Chanan Greenblatt/Unsplash.