A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti

In the baseball pantheon, Giamatti occupies an unusual place: leaving the presidency of Yale University, he became the president of the National League and then, for the five months before his death in 1989, the commissioner of baseball. Although his writings on the subject were few, all radiated a love for the game as well as an appreciation of it as a metaphor for American life and, indeed, life in general. He saw baseball as quintessentially American because it combined individual achievement with successful teamwork and because, in a country where rootlessness appears to be a pervasive national characteristic, there is always the quest to go home. Yale clinical professor Robson has collected nine Giamatti writings, including the often-anthologized essay ""The Green Fields of the Mind"" and the statement banning Pete Rose from baseball for life, in which he notes that ""no individual is superior to the game."" The collection will appeal primarily to the most diehard baseball fans. (Apr.)