MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 02712cam a2200349Ii 4500
001 13241774
005 20180618184617.0
008 170828t20182018ctu b 001 0 eng d
020 $a9780300224276$q(hardcover)
020 $a0300224273$q(hardcover)
024 $a99976524839
035 $a(OCoLC)on1002129463
035 $a(OCoLC)1002129463
035 $a(NNC)13241774
040 $aBTCTA$beng$erda$cBTCTA$dBDX$dYDX$dOCLCO$dBUDAP$dORX$dON8$dOCLCQ$dZVR$dCGL$dCLE$dPFLCL
050 4 $aGV867.64$b.J33 2018
082 04 $a796.357$223
100 1 $aJacoby, Susan,$d1945-$eauthor.
245 10 $aWhy baseball matters /$cSusan Jacoby.
264 1 $aNew Haven ;$aLondon :$bYale University Press,$c[2018]
264 4 $c©2018
300 $axvi, 200 pages ;$c21 cm.
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$bnc$2rdacarrier
490 1 $aWhy x matters
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520 $aBaseball, first dubbed the "national pastime" in print in 1856, is the country's most tradition-bound sport. Despite remaining popular and profitable into the twenty-first century, the game is losing young fans, among African Americans and women as well as white men. Furthermore, baseball's greatest charm--a clockless suspension of time--is also its greatest liability in a culture of digital distraction. These paradoxes are explored by the historian and passionate baseball fan Susan Jacoby in a book that is both a love letter to the game and a tough-minded analysis of the current challenges to its special position--in reality and myth--in American culture. The concise but wide-ranging analysis moves from the Civil War--when many soldiers played ball in northern and southern prisoner-of-war camps--to interviews with top baseball officials and young men who prefer playing online "fantasy baseball" to attending real games. Revisiting her youthful days of watching televised baseball in her grandfather's bar, the author links her love of the game with the informal education she received in everything from baseball's history of racial segregation to pitch location. Jacoby argues forcefully that the major challenge to baseball today is a shortened attention span at odds with a long game in which great hitters fail two out of three times. Without sanitizing this basic problem, Why Baseball Matters remind us that the game has retained its grip on our hearts precisely because it has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reinvent itself in times of immense social change.
650 0 $aBaseball$xSocial aspects.
650 4 $aBaseball$xSocial aspects.
830 0 $aWhy X matters.
852 00 $bglx$hGV867.64$i.J33 2018g