Bushville : Life and Time in Amateur Baseball

From Bushville: "The game is a fine construct. Its trace through anyone''s life can range from a youthful diversion to a full-blown career, a tender small-fingered grasp to a deep muscular understanding. It provides a focus and a way to express the physical self in a physical world. I''ve played every moment of every game in my life as an amateur in the best sense of that word--doing something I love just for the love of it. The roots of that soulful effort run as deep as my earliest memories, measuring them. And possibly, yours likewise."

To play baseball is to become part of the game. One need not be a megabuck star to live baseball as a participant, to figure into its geometry and its drama. The friendly exertions of amateur play lie at the heart of the sport, comprising the wellspring of its professional levels.

Here viewed as a pastime through the eyes of a lifelong amateur player, baseball unfolds as an experience of motion and time and senses--the work of muscle, the textures of wood and leather, the warmth of sun, the scents of a grassy field. In the timeless continuity of the game can be glimpsed part of baseball''s singular appeal: the lively tension between the momentary and the eternal, what is over and what is never over. The interwoven essays making up Bushville are a poignant reflection upon the pursuit of what is essentially a ball, but what is crucially human as well.