Another Baseball Book, Again

--from Wikipedia

Yes, I have finished another baseball book this summer. (I think that's four for the year. So far.) This one was a unique search centered not on baseball but on A baseball. The baseball that Bobby Thomson hit out of the Polo Grounds in New York in October 1951. It won the pennant for the then NY Giants over Dem Bums- the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was a walk-off, bottom of the ninth home run and became known in baseball lore as The Shot Heard 'Round the World.

Well, Brian Biegel, from a long line of Dodger fans goes on an investigative chase to find the ball, the actual ball, long missing from any collection or even awareness. He calls it the Miracle Ball. But as in so many baseball stories (Field of Dreams comes to mind) this one is about much more than baseball. It is about a son and his father; it is about family; it is about mental health and the power of meaning; it is perhaps deeply about the power of cultural myths.

What Biegel goes through in his search for the baseball is fun to read. He even hires forensic experts to search the old newspaper photo of the ball sailing over the fence. Maybe they can find the person in that grainy old picture who caught- and has- the ball.

There's also good baseball lore. A fun book and one that I found interesting on a number of levels. No one will ever convince me that sports writing is any less profound or able to share meaning than other writing.