The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches

Posted: Tuesday, August 21, 2012, 9:09 am

In brief

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This is perfect reading for a pennant race. Catch it!

Baseball lends itself to writing like no other sport. Maybe it's the leisurely pace or the lack of a clock. Maybe it's the sport's well-documented and granular history or those reflective breaks between innings.

Whatever the reason, America's pastime has been the loyal muse of countless fiction and nonfiction writers alike; from Roger Angell to Stephen King to Ring Lardner to Bernard Malamud. And just when we think everything that can be written about the sport has been written, another writer comes along and shows us a facet of the game we never examined.

In The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches, Zack Hample presents a ball's-eye view of our national sport that's colorful, informative and, at times, comically absurd. Let's face it, the ball is the center of the action. It's high time someone tackled the game from this unique (and ever-changing) perspective.

Given that Zack Hample has amassed a collection of more than 6,000 baseballs retrieved from ballparks around the country, there's likely no one more qualified to tackle the subject than him. His wide-ranging approach mixes factoids, anecdotes, history and how-to to cover everything from balligraphy to ballhawks. The result is often bigger than the game itself; presenting readers with a baseball-shaped mirror that shows us as much about our history, culture and pursuits as it does our favorite sport.

Zack Hample will be in Worthington on Wednesday, September 5, 2012 as part of the library's Hear & Now author series!