Customer Reviews

Baseball without Borders: The International Pastime

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Great concept to go around the world and write about baseball there. The problem is by compiling a book where the authors for each nation are different is you get a very disjointed narrative and varying levels of writing skill. The other problem is too much of the content of these articles are about the history and development of baseball in these nations. That's fine but, if you're like me and already have some knowledge of this, I'd have preferred more on what is going on today in these nations.

There are some glaring editing/factchecking errors, too (Firenze/Florence where the author cannot make up his mind whether to use the Italian or English, the claim soccer star Hidetoshi Nakata had to sign with AS Roma because of some anthem flap when he went to Perugia first in Italy and it was a done deal prior to this mini-furor, etc.).

Of course it's great to learn about baseball in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Puerto Rico et al but this book is too swing and a miss.

This book gives an indepth account of baseball's history in many countries around the world. It tells how the sport traveled to each country, the differences in the way the game is played there, the societal influences the game has created, and how baseball culture has changed through time in each of the countries written about. The book is easy to read and written nicely. I used this book as a research source when writing about baseball in Japan.