Its Where You Played the Game: How Youth Baseball Determines the Personality of the American Male

Each year two million youngsters play youth baseball, unwittingly stepping into an arena where their characters will be set in concrete, where their roles in life will be unequivocally fixed. Nothing a kid has ever experienced will be as traumatic or pivotal, and the consequences are as predictable as high tides, sunsets, and Red Sox disasters. Each of the nine positions produces a unique personality type. Take the shortstop, for example. Half the team's spirit is crammed into the scrawny, scrappy spitfire who stakes out the dirt between second and third base. Shortstops are scary people. Given a choice of enemies between the IRS and the Navy Seals on one hand or an eight-year-old shortstop on the other, take your chances with the feds. These character traits stick, and in this book you'll see why the best FBI agents are former catchers; why third basemen drive pickup trucks; and why guys who never played baseball as kids open sports bars.