Product Description

In the spirit of Field of Dreams, a remarkable book about baseball and the meaning of life from the author of Living Prayer.

A game between the Iowa Cubs and the Nashville Sounds at an AAA park in Nashville, Tennessee, provides a lens through which Robert Benson explores the game of baseball and the meaning of life in The Game. It is "an ordinary week night game in the early part of the season between two teams that will finish far out of first place in the Pacific League." But Benson shows us how in this average game of baseball, just as in our everyday lives, the routine plays-the seemingly minor yet vital moves, empty of bravado-eventually win the game.

In beautifully measured prose, Benson links events in his life to the innings in this baseball game. Married to a woman who can quote baseball stats with the best of them and with two children who share his love for the game (his teenage daughter made the decision early on that she would be the first woman to play for the Yankees), Benson explores the ways in which baseball has always somehow shaped and defined his life. The Game is an extraordinary testament to the everlasting wonder and magic of the great American pastime.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1121068 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
"Whenever you run into me, wherever it is that we are, and whatever it is that we are supposed to be doing, it is wise to remember that I would generally rather be at the ballpark." Benson (Living Prayer) recounts his experiences in baseball, his family and life during this whimsical, flowing account of a minor league baseball game between the Iowa Cubs and the Nashville Sounds. The book is constructed in nine chapters, each prefaced with a quote from late Major League Baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, to match the nine innings of a baseball game, but the structure is rather loose, permitting the author to muse on a variety of subjects, including the Chicago Cubs, his relationship with his wife and a book tour. Although overtly self-conscious, Benson tries his hardest to write in the tradition of high-class baseball writers (think Giamatti and George Will, rather than W.P. Kinsella or Bull Durham), and at times he succeeds: "Those who do not frequent baseball diamonds do not know about the cosmic principle known as If They See It, They Will Slide. If you are a kid, and you are running toward a base on a baseball diamond, and there is absolutely no reason to slide, you will slide anyway. Just for the joy of it. Just for the pretend of it. Just for the dust and the dirt of it. Just for the fact that some cosmic force requires it. It may well be how, if not exactly why, the game of baseball was invented in the first place." He does say some things that will rub a certain type of baseball fan the wrong way, such as that he roots for both the Braves and the Yankees. Literary-minded fans who believe that baseball is a mirror for life will enjoy this book.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Benson (Living Prayer) has season tickets to his home-town minor league team in Nashville, and he structures this book around the action of a typical game. He has produced an intriguing meditative piece on the magnetic pull of baseball, spicing his book with apt quotes from both baseball and literary stars but leaving little doubt that, given the choice, he would rather have been a great ballplayer than a great writer. Thoughtful fans will enjoy.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Robert Benson is the author of Living Prayer, Venite, and Between the Dreaming and the Coming True.

Customer Reviews

awesome...
the human drama plays on, even with the world's greatest baseball player and his friends....

While we're at it...
Let's point out a couple other factual errors about Mr. Benson's book. First of all he claims Harry Caray's signature home run call is, "It could be, it might be, it is!"
Actually, Harry used to say, "It might be, it could be, it is!"
I'm sure this is pretty trivial, but I've heard Harry call it this way hundreds of times and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to point this out. Benson makes this mistake a few times in this book, and it's annoying.
Benson also claims to be at Wrigley Field one day in May to see a young phenom by the name of Kerry Wood face the author's favorite team the Braves. At that game, Benson and his wife and the rest of the crowd are led in a rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" by none other than Harry Caray.
Well, Harry died in February of 1998, and Kerry Wood didn't make his major league debut until 4/12/1998 (Easter Sunday) against the Expos.
The reason why I bring this up is because I often wondered what Harry would have said had he been alive during Wood's 20 strikeout performance against the Astros and the remarkable 1998 season that we all enjoyed as Cubs fans.
These are just a couple of annoying factual errors that I encounter in Benson's book. Other than that, I love the book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys baseball and doesn't view it as just a sport, but as a way of life.
Despite the errors mentioned above, Mr. Benson, I would love to play catch or have you hit fungoes to me anytime.

Thoughtful book marred by factual errors
Although I enjoyed this book's leisurely stroll through one man's relationship with baseball, I was disturbed by some serious screwups.

First, Benson gets wrong the year Roger Maris' single season record for home runs was broken. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa pursued and passed Maris in 1998, not 1999. This is an almost unbelievable error. Only three seasons after the fact, a baseball author making this mistake is like an American historian writing about the original twelve colonies.

Six pages later we read about the famous home run hit by
"a light hitting infielder named Bobby Thomson" in 1951. Thomson was an outfielder and finished tied for fourth (with Stan Musial) in the National League in home runs that year with 32.

Since Benson's book is built on his lifelong love of the game, mistakes like this diminish our trust even if they don't make us doubt the depth of his feeling. His sincerity seems very real, and his writing is smooth, personal and appealing.

Mistakes aside, it's nice to read a baseball book by a fan who is a writer first.