Why Baseball Matters

A conversation with Susan Jacoby

What compelled you to write this book?  How does baseball figure in your life?  
 
Baseball has been an important part of my life since early childhood, when I learned to understand this complicated game while watching the Chicago White Sox with my grandfather and his friends on the color television set—the first in the neighborhood—in my grandfather’s bar. Apart from reading, baseball is the only pastime that has given me immense pleasure throughout my life.
 
Does baseball matter?  How will baseball have to change in order to keep mattering?
 
In recent years, I became disturbed by statistics showing that baseball has the oldest, whitest, most male audience of any major sport. I wrote this book because I wanted to explore the reasons why this oldest American-made game is having trouble attracting a younger generation of fans. Consumers of digital media are used to instant gratification, and baseball’s attraction is only apparent to those willing to invest enough time to understand what is happening when nothing obvious—like a home run—is taking place.
 
Baseball matters precisely because it stands out as an alternative to our digitally obsessed culture of distraction. In this book, I celebrate the joys of the long game in an impatient world.
 
How is this book in keeping with your other writing?
 
I started my writing career as a reporter for the Washington Post and am best known today for my books about the history of secularism and freethought. But I never stopped being a baseball fan. Most of my books deal, on a number of levels, with the importance of critical and logical thinking—and baseball is, as far as I am concerned, the thinking person’s game.