Sports Illustrated: Baseball

If you've ever stood in the batter's box and put good wood on the ball, snapping a liner on a rope to left, or thrilled at the crack of the bat as your favorite player did, you know that baseball is a great game. A beautiful and timeless game that is as unique to American culture as the throaty rumble of a V8 on the open road or the seductive rhythms of late-night jazz. Since its inception in 1954, Sports Illustrated has understood baseball's special place in American society and has captured the grandeur and shame, the joy and despair of each magical season in the four decades since. Printed here is a collection of selected articles, essays, and biographies lifted from the weekly magazine, written by such diverse talents as Frank Deford, Robert Frost, George Plimpton, Steve Wulf, Roy Blount, Jr., and Robert Creamer, to name but a few. Each piece reveals another thread in the tapestry of the sport, sharing how baseball matters to the individual or to the nation as a collective whole. In 1956, William Saroyan wrote, "Well is it a game? Is that all it is? So the Dodgers win... So the Yanks... So what? What good does that do a nation? What good does that do the world? A little good. Quite a little. And there's always next year." That's the beauty of baseball, the eternal optimism of knowing that even down by five with two outs in the bottom of the ninth there's still a fighting chance. The stories in this book capture the hope and heartbreak of America's beautiful game and relate the shared experiences of players and fans in the unique words of some of its most celebrated writers. --George Laney