I was pretty excited that Why Baseball Matters had a female author since so many seem to write off any females that are fans. (I once went to a ballgame by myself and was "quizzed" by the guys around me until they felt I had sufficient enough knowledge to be at the game. Another female was not as lucky as she couldn't pass their quiz and they made fun of her the whole game for not knowing what was going on.)  She goes into detail about how the game demands your concentration - whether it be listening to it on radio, watching TV or even in person (when it is arguably the hardest with no announcers to help you out!) and you need to know and understand what happened before to know why certain things are happening after.  I also liked how she talked about how people think it is "too slow" and therefore boring.  I find pitcher's duels to be boring and would much rather a high-scoring (on both sides or at least my team) but I know I am in the minority there and there are many who find a great pitching matchup to just be the best of the best in watching and competition as well. (I just want everyone to run, run, run around those bases!)  It's always interesting to read about other fans perspectives of the game and what they enjoy and what made them a fan and what teams they root for!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated.

Why Baseball Matters by Susan Jacoby was an enjoyable read. Susan is a longtime baseball fan who brings her history with baseball to life in this book. She discusses the problems baseball is having with attracting and retaining younger fans. She describes and breaks down various studies concerning such issues as why there are currently less African American fans and players., why current fans skew heavily towards older, white people, etc. She also discusses the actions current Major League Baseball officials, including Commissioner Rob Manfred, are taking to attract new fans. Ms. Jacoby breaks down why some of these actions are useless, detrimental, or helpful.. My favorite part of the book was her list of recommendations on how to improve the current state of the game without destroying the game itself.

The state of baseball today is either excellent, since revenues in the sport are at an all-time high, or on life support, since many feel the games are too long and it is losing its appeal to young people. Both arguments have their merits and this book by best-selling author Susan Jacoby offers several explanations for the latter beliefs.

The basic premise of the book is that Jacoby, a woman who fell in love with the game as a child in Chicago going to White Sox games with her father, believes the sport has to realize that thanks to digital advances, the attention span of fans is shorter than ever. Baseball has to find ways to attract younger fans who have grown up in this age. She both criticizes and praises the game in the attempts to do so.

This sounds contradictory, but a reader will realize how Jacoby does this. First she explains how “baseball is a game in which one must wait, pay attention, and wait again for startling, defining moments of action.” Thus, the distractions that younger fans have in today’s digital world (beautifully explained by a young female fan) will mean that the “defining” moments will have to be powerful to keep the attention of these fans.

This doesn’t mean she necessarily agrees with baseball’s response. Indeed, she is critical of the attempts by Commissioner Rob Manfred to speed up the game and believes that is misguided as the length of the games is not the true source of the lack of younger, female and African-American fans. She also pointed to readers of the New York Times who wrote to the newspaper who believed that baseball’s woes could be addressed not by speeding up the game but instead to make it more like football. Needless to say, she wasn’t totally on board with this idea either.

She also believes that the game doesn’t make much effort to attract fans of color and female fans. Since the game doesn’t have the same transition from generation to generation as it did in the middle of the 20th century, she shows that other sports, especially football, are gaining these fans and baseball needs to step up its efforts to appeal to these fans.
This makes it sound like the book is negative and critical of the game, but that is not the case. Jacoby shares many wonderful stories about the game and her adopted team, the New York Mets. She sounds off about the designated hitter (hates it), baseball movies (doesn’t like “Field of Dreams” or Robert Redford cast as Roy Hobbs in “The Natural”) and why fans love the game the way they do (“…we love it precisely because it is not like life.”) Her stories, along with her suggestions for making the game better for all fans, are compelling reading that every person interested in the game of baseball will enjoy.

A quick and easy read that will make the reader think, “Why Baseball Matters” is the type of book that not only makes a critical examination of the game, it offers wonderful opportunities to not only attract new fans, but also illustrate why fans of the game love it the way they do with a passion not easily seen in other sports.

I wish to thank Yale University Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a good book. It felt a bit repetitive at times, usually as though Jacoby had written separate essays without realizing they would be connected. It is also, unfortunately, quickly outdated, as she refers to certain issues (will Jeter remain solely connected to the Yankees?) that we already know the issue to. But it's still a fun book and her rants about Tom Seaver being traded away from the Mets reminded me so much of my own father's complaints on the issue.

This is a well researched and written history about "America's Pastime" that is filled with nuggets of information that any fan of baseball or trivia will love.