Review Essay: Why Baseball?

Why Baseball? attempts to answer the personal question of what led a kid from the Canadian prairies to a lifelong love of America’s pastime and explore the larger question of other Canadians’ connection to the game through a close reading of several recent books on the topic. The books under review are Andrew Forbes’ The Utility of Boredom and The Only Way Is The Steady Way, Stacey May Fowles’ Baseball Life Advice: Loving the Game that Saved Me, Mark Kingwell’s Fail Better: Why Baseball Matters, Andrew North (Editor)’s Our Game, Too: Influential Figures and Milestones in Canadian Baseball, Dale Jacobs and Heidi LM Jacobs’ 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer, and Heidi Jacobs’ 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars’ Barrier-Breaking Year. This review essay blends anecdotes from the author’s life with quotes from the selected books to suggest that Canadian baseball fandom is not a unique experience but one experienced uniquely.