Professor Baseball: Searching for Redemption and the Perfect Lineup on the Softball Diamonds of Central Park [Hardcover]

Edwin Amenta (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2007

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. 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. But for one short, wild-haired, bespectacled professor, playing softball in New York’s Central Park means a whole lot more. 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. As rookie manager of the Performing Arts Softball League’s doormat Sharkeys, he reverses softball’s usual brawn-over-brains formula. 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. And though he rejects the baseball-as-life metaphor, life keeps intruding on his softball season. Amenta here comes to grips with the humiliation of assisted reproduction, suffers mysterious ailments, and finds himself lingering at the sponsor’s bar, while his partner, a beautiful but baseball-challenged professor, second-guesses his book in the making. Can he turn his team—and his life—around?

Packed with colorful personalities, dramatic games, and the bustle of New York life, Professor Baseball will charm anyone who has ever root, root, rooted for the underdog.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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. At another, the book is a narrative account of one person''s lived-through obsession. It is a coming-of-middle-age tale of a forty-something man, with fatherhood imminent, trying to come to terms with changing fortunes in his professional and personal life. Above all, it is about his forlorn and ultimately doomed quest for redemption. . . . 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."--John Sugden, Times Higher Education Supplement

(John Sugden Times Higher Education Supplement )

"This is pretty funny stuff. . . . Can serious softball and the daily grind of life survive together? Good question; good pursuit of the answer."

(Blue Ridge Business Journal )

About the Author

Edwin Amenta is professor in the Department of Sociology at New York University and at the University of California, Irvine.  In 2005, he posted a .535 on-base percentage in the Performing Arts Softball League, while flashing some serious leather at second base.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 242 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226016668
• ISBN-13: 978-0226016665
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,878,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #83 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Softball

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars slow-pitch softball players of the world unite!, February 25, 2009

By 

R. Wayne - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professor Baseball: Searching for Redemption and the Perfect Lineup on the Softball Diamonds of Central Park (Hardcover)

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 vs. tradition, etc.

I am experiencing the same angst right now, trying to play both senior slow-pitch softball as a rookie & still keep up with the "youngsters" in the church league version. Prof. Amenta is able to keep it all straight somehow, in an obsessive-compulsive way. I mean, how did he ever have time for his "regular job" as a sociology professor while playing in 4-5 leagues per week for months on end?

In the end (finally!), it is the relationships experienced, the mano-a-mano camaraderie that linger in one's memory (which the author confirms). The game itself is simply a framework, a structure for such interaction. Ahh, but what a game!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Professor Baseball: An Intriguing Prospect, December 23, 2007

By 

Michael H. Ebner (Lake Forest, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professor Baseball: Searching for Redemption and the Perfect Lineup on the Softball Diamonds of Central Park (Hardcover)

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-plus scholarship of the so-called "Chicago School." Scratch beneath the surface and you'll surely discover that many a professor -- sociologist or otherwise -- enthralled with baseball aspired to write such a book.

This is an ethnography, written in the tradition of the participant-observer (e.g., Herbert J. Gans, or more recently, Mitchell Dunier), associated with Chicago sociology).

Professor Amenta, a failed Little League player from suburban Chicago, pursued redemption by playing in organized recreational soft-ball leagues in Manhattan. I won't reveal the outcome. Read it for yourself!

We learn a great deal about the author's softball career ("Eddy ball"), academic career, and private life (the latter including a considerable amount of detail about infertility). Perhaps some will deem this overboiled, although mostly I found the whole thing tasteful, insightful, and even inspired.

I especially appreciated the author's concluding observations about the real meaning of life -- professional as well as personal -- as well as his rich experiences on the field of softball dreams. Professor Amenta provides readers with a great deal to contemplate about what happens when culture and society reach an intersection.

Professor Baseball may not be for every armchair baseball reader. But I certainly found it memorable and suspect that many others will subscribe to this sentiment.