If baseball is America's national pastime, surely our national genius is in tinkering: taking things apart to see how they are put together and how they work. The Way Baseball Works combines these two expressions of Yankee (to say nothing of Dodger) ingenuity to break the game down into its component parts and examine it through text, charts, computer-generated illustrations, and photos.
The Way Baseball Works explores:
* The development and design of equipment, from the construction of a baseball to the evolution of the glove
* The science of the game -- pitching grips and trajectories, the physics of fielding, and the reason why, as Ted Williams said, "hitting a baseball is the hardest thing in sports"
* The geometry of a ballpark, and why baseball, virtually alone among team sports, is a different game depending upon the park in which it is played.
* The game as it is played at its highest level: in the head. How managers decide when to hit-and-run and when to sacrifice, how players make the split-second decisions that spell the difference between hitting .250 and .310...the difference between victory and defeat
* The organization of baseball at all levels, including introductions to the dramatis personae of a baseball game -- not just players, but grounds-keepers, umpires, scorers, and trainers, all part of the ceremony and history of this most American of games.
The Way Baseball Works, featuring an introduction and dozens of comments by ex-major leaguer and present-day broadcaster and analyst Tim McCarver, and published with the full cooperation of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, is the ultimate treasure for baseball fans.
