Professor Baseball: Searching for Redemption and the Perfect Lineup on the Softball Diamonds of Central Park
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.50 (547 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0226016668 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 242 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-05-03 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
The academic community might have had to wait a little longer for Amernta's quantitative study of pension funds in Depression-era America because of it, but I for one found Professor Baseball a more than worthwhile diversion.". At another, the book is a narrative account of one person's lived-through obsession. Above all, it is about his forlorn and ultimately doomed quest for redemption. "At one level, Professor Baseball is a straightforward diary of Amenta's successes and failures over one summer season in the several teams on which he plays and the one of which he is player-manager. It is a coming-of-middle-age tale of a forty-something man, with fa
slow-pitch softball players of the world unite! R. Wayne I loved reading Prof. Amenta's composite long summer of '05 of playing softball in multiple leagues in NYC. The cast of characters ("players") could have been Anywhere U.S.A., where adult slow-pitch softball is played---personality conflicts, tough decisions, other life events intruding, winning vs. popularity, sabermetrics . "Professor Baseball: An Intriguing Prospect" according to Michael H. Ebner. I couldn't resist reading this book, captured by its wonderful title. Hats off, and three cheers, to the publisher for agreeing to issue this title.Professor Amenta is a bi-coastal university sociologist, trained at the University of Chicago. And this book is framed -- to his great credit with some subtlety -- in the century. Pen said Professor Baseball. I thought this book was pretty tight. I was in Amenta class so it was like knowing a for real author. Wow!
As rookie manager of the Performing Arts Softball League’s doormat Sharkeys, he reverses softball’s usual brawn-over-brains formula. It's one last chance to heal the nagging wounds of Little League trauma before the rust of decline and the relentless responsibilities of fatherhood set in.Professor Baseball is the coming-of-middle-age story of New York University professor and Little League benchwarmer Edwin Amenta. For some, this yearly ritual is driven by a simple desire to enjoy a good ballgame; for others, it’s a way to forge friendships—and rivalries. He coaxes his skeptical teammates to follow his sabermetric and sociological approach, based equally on Bill James and Max Weber, which in the heady days of early success he dubs “Eddy Ball.” But Amenta soon learns that his teammates’ attachments to favorite positions and time-honored (if ineffective) strategies are hard to break—especially when the team begins losing. It happens every summer: packs of beer-bellied men with gloves and aluminum bats, putting their middle-aged bodies to the test on the softball diamond. Amenta here comes to grips with the humiliation of assisted reproduction, suffers mysterious ailm