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A. Bartlett Giamatti

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A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti Paperback – Illustrated, January 4, 1998

by Kenneth S. Robson M.D. (Editor), David Halberstam (Foreword)

4.6 62 ratings

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With a foreword by David Halberstam. He spoke out against player trading. He banned Pete Rose from baseball for gambling. He even asked sports fans to clean up their acts. Bart Giamatti was baseball's Renaissance man and its commissioner. In A GREAT AND GLORIOUS GAME, a collection of spirited, incisive essays, Giamatti reflects on the meaning of the game. Baseball, for him, was a metaphor for life. He artfully argues that baseball is much more than an American "pastime." "Baseball is about going home," he wrote, "and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need." And in his powerful 1989 decision to ban Pete Rose from baseball, Giamatti states that no individual is superior to the game itself, just as no individual is superior to our democracy. A GREAT AND GLORIOUS GAME is a thoughtful meditation on baseball, character, and values by one of the most eloquent men in the world of sport.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

By far the most literate of baseball's commissioners, the late Bart Giamatti, former president of Yale, was the game's most unashamedly vocal fan both before and during his tenure as chief executive. The child of immigrants, he embraced baseball's very Americanness, and ascribed to its simple goal--coming home--a far-reaching, overall metaphor. His ardor was unguarded and unabashed, his approach sentimental and as expansive as a pair of foul lines diverging in the distance. Giamatti's oversized passion infuses everything in this slim volume, from his wistful elegy to Tom Seaver and his admonition to fans to clean up their act, to his pained public statement banning Pete Rose from the game for life. Best of all, his seductively lyrical essay "The Green Fields of the Mind" leads off the lineup. The latter alone--it begins by poignantly observing of baseball, "It breaks your heart. It's designed to break your heart"--is worth the price of admission.

From Publishers Weekly

In the baseball pantheon, Giamatti occupies an unusual place: leaving the presidency of Yale University, he became the president of the National League and then, for the five months before his death in 1989, the commissioner of baseball. Although his writings on the subject were few, all radiated a love for the game as well as an appreciation of it as a metaphor for American life and, indeed, life in general. He saw baseball as quintessentially American because it combined individual achievement with successful teamwork and because, in a country where rootlessness appears to be a pervasive national characteristic, there is always the quest to go home. Yale clinical professor Robson has collected nine Giamatti writings, including the often-anthologized essay "The Green Fields of the Mind" and the statement banning Pete Rose from baseball for life, in which he notes that "no individual is superior to the game." The collection will appeal primarily to the most diehard baseball fans.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Giamatti died just nine years ago, after having served as commissioner of baseball for only five months. Already, however, a Greek word that appears several times in this slim collection applies to the memories of Giamatti held by many fans: nostos, the yearning for home. They yearn for the faraway days of 1989, when baseball still clung to vestiges of old glories and verities, and a man like Giamatti, a literature scholar and former president of Yale University, could write seriously about the sport as the ultimate metaphor for all of America. Giamatti would share fans' grief at the continuing debasement of the sport (consider the 1997 rent-a-champs Florida Marlins), but not their pessimism. The people who run baseball today, however hapless or greedy, dare not tamper with the rules of the game, whose symmetries are a constant source of fascination for Giamatti. Nor can they change the tension at the heart of the game between freedom and order that embodies, as Giamatti puts it, ``the promise America made itself to cherish the individual while recognizing the overarching claims of the group.'' The collector of these writings, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut, apparently dug up virtually every word Giamatti wrote on the sport, not all of which needed to be set in marble. But even the most jaded and long-cooled passions will be stirred by Giamatti's erudite and intense love of baseball. Baseball, to him, is so like America in its interplay between individual freedom and the rule of law that it will be forever the national pastime, regardless of how far it slips from national favor. (The volume has a foreword by David Halberstam.) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

Giamatti loved baseball and he loved language, and those passions are marvelously merged throughout the pages of this memorable book. -- The New York Times Book Review, Peggy Constantine

Giamatti's death ... cut far too short the life of a scholar, a baseball fan, and in the most old-fashioned sense, a custodian of what baseball means to a lot of Americans. -- Los Angeles Times

It is a treasure. -- The Wall Street Journal, Richard J. Tofel

From the Back Cover

Giamatti was to the Commissioner's office what Sandy Koufax was to the pitcher's mound: Giamatti's career had the highest ratio of excellence to longevity.

About the Author

Kenneth S. Robson, M.D., is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut, a clinical professor at Yale University, his alma mater, and a practicing child and adolescent psychiatrist.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Algonquin Books; First Edition (January 4, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 136 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1565121929
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1565121928
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.22 x 0.62 x 7.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #112,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #209 in Baseball (Books)

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4.6 62 ratings

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Take The Bus Sammy

The Green Fields of the Mind

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2014

Verified Purchase

A Great and Glorius Game is a must have for every baseball fan young and old. I saw an article about the great Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, and he mentioned that he carries around the story, "The Green Fields of the Mind" with him in his folder and that got me searching on Amazon immediatly went searching. I came across this book that has a collection of writings from the late former Commissioner Giamatti, and read through it within a day or two, it was that great of a book. I bought another copy of this for a friend for his birthday because he is as big of a baseball fan as I am and he enjoyed it as much as I did.

If you know someone that love reading about baseball, or loves baseball in general, this would be a great gift!

6 people found this helpful

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Roger Sharpe

Very best of literature on the significance of baseball to the American society

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2016

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This is the very best of literature on the significance of baseball to the American Society. I first became acquainted with A. Bartlett Giamatti when I was a graduate student at Harvard University's Kennedy School and heard his address to his son's high school graduation class at Choate, "An Education for Freedom." Then president of Yale University, Giamatti was a classicist and drew on the best of his knowledge of what education brings to a citizen in a democracy. As baseball commissioner when writing some of these essays, Giamatti draws on this same knowledge-base and applies it to the game of baseball, which he loved.

One person found this helpful

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P. Quadrino

One of the best baseball books I've ever read

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2016

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This small collection of essays features some of the best, most thoughtful and poetic writing about baseball I've ever read.

It is simply a beautiful book and I look forward to picking it up again each spring to refresh my perspective on the great and glorious game.

2 people found this helpful

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Thomas F. Maguire

Beautifully Written Little Book

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2012

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Giamatti writes with love and intelligence about the very poetic game of baseball. A must read for any real baseball fan.

2 people found this helpful

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KRNTbaby

from a man who really loved the game

Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2013

Verified Purchase

Not a very big book for the price and at times a bit too philosophical for some tastes, but has some great insights and plan on quoting him a lot in the future. A man who truly loved the game. Truly a shame his term as commissioner was so brief.

One person found this helpful

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Michael boron

A double at best from a home run hittter

Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2017

Verified Purchase

While well written, expected more

One person found this helpful

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rivercity

Green Fields of the Mind

Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2023

If the phrase "Green Fields of the Mind" brings to mind a deeper view of baseball - then this book is for you. I would recommend it, rather than "Take Time for Paradise". It is the best of his writings on baseball & America, - America of the past unfortunately. (FYI - the "Baseball as Narrative" chapter has a typo in the 1st sentence: it says "careb throwing" - supposed to be "card throwing"!)

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Maureen Haughey

I recommend it to anyone who loves the sport

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2018

Verified Purchase

Such a charming little book about America's game. I recommend it to anyone who loves the sport.

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