Volume 39, Number 18 · November 5, 1992
Dreams That Money Can Buy
By Stephen Jay Gould
The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story
by Peter Lefcourt
Random House, 290 pp., $20.00
Box Socials
by W.P. Kinsella
Ballantine Books, 225 pp., $20.00
The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday
by Luke Salisbury
The Smith, 285 pp., $24.95
Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime
by Andrew Zimbalist
Basic Books, 270 pp., $20.00
The Diamond Revolution: The Prospects for Baseball After the Collapse of Its Ruling Class
by Neil J. Sullivan
St. Martin's, 232 pp., $19.95
The Brooklyn Dodgers
by Peter C. Bjarkman
Chartwell Books, 79 pp., $10.98
Lost Ballparks: A Celebration of Baseball's Legendary Fields
by Lawrence S. Ritter
Viking Studio Books, 210 pp., $25.00
The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History Chartwell Books, 110 Enterprise Avenue, Secaucus, New Yersey, 07094; Amereon Ltd., P.O. Box 1200, Mattituck, New York, 11952.)
by Phil Dixon, by Patrick J. Hannigan
Amereon (The Smith, 69 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11201;, 329 pp., $34.95
Baseball: The Perfect Game
Photographs by Danielle Weil, Introduction by David Halberstam, text by Peter Richmond
Rizzoli, 128 pp., $29.95
Why is baseball so different from other sports in its symbolic status and impact upon America? Why does only baseball claim the undisputed status of a 'national pastime'? Further questions can be posed to the game's different constituencies. For writers and intellectuals: Why is baseball alone among sports (with some challenge, perhaps, from boxing) the subject of a distinguished literature, both fiction and nonfiction? For lawyers and politicians: How can the anomaly of baseball's exemption from the anti-trust laws, accorded to no other sport yet affirmed three times by the Supreme Court (in 1922, 1953, and 1972), possibly be justified? (In declaring baseball a sport and not a business subject to regulation, the Court challenged Congress to pass legislation to deal with this anomoly, and Congress has dodged the issue ever since. Apparently, neither branch of government dares to infuse this form of reality into our chief icon and pastime.)
Review, 6294 words
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