This is a book about baseball, in the way that the Chariots of Fire is a movie about running. Baseball is a part of this book, but it isn't a book about baseball. It's a book about a kid who wants nothing more than to play baseball, who has incredible natural talent, who is willing to put in the work, who finds someone who can help him achieve his baseball dreams, and who makes a mistake.
Sorta. Because it is a book about baseball.
The title refers to a fictional book in the book, also about baseball. The fictional book is a zen-like non-fiction book on how to be the best shortstop ever, from the best shortstop ever. The quoted passages of the fictional book inside this also-fictional book (the one I read, not the one I read about the character reading), are inspiring and very zen, which I liked. I was expecting baseball in this book, and got it.
What I wasn't expecting in this book was Stoicism and the realization of just how much I f'ing know about baseball. I was also not expecting to understand the want and the need to play baseball. Well, not so much baseball, but the need for movement, the need for flow, the need for the joy of being so excellent at something to the point of stillness in action. I may have had moments of brilliance in my ultimate career, but it wasn't consistent, I didn't own it. I had glimpses, though. Enough to understand what this book is trying to say, with the beauty of baseball and the stillness in action.
Growing up, baseball for me was exactly how Affenlight, the college president in the book, views baseball:
Baseball—what a boring game! One player threw the ball, another caught it, a third held a bat. Everyone else stood around.
Page 64
Today is a day that I want a giant reset button. Everything small went wrong, causing everything to compound and grow more and more frustrating. I tried hard to de-escalate, and was unsuccessful. I managed to offend a good friend. I was short on the phone with someone who didn't deserve it. I stomped around a lot, frustrated I had ruined my gloves with cacti stickers and didn't have any new ones for me or Mom to use. I tugged at the water hose harder than I needed to tug, just to have a physical release for my frustration with the hose and its unyielding coil. I sat for a bit to understand where my frustration was coming from, what was triggering my hard-suppressed frustration? I've been working hard in being calmer, why was I so damn agitated by the smallest things?