Baseball and Philosophy

Baseball and Philosophy
Author: Eric Bronson
Publisher: Open Court
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2011-08-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0812697758

Baseball and Philosophy brings together two high-powered pastimes: the sport of baseball and the academic discipline of philosophy. Eric Bronson asked eighteen young professors to provide their profound analysis of some aspect of baseball. The result offers surprisingly deep insights into this most American of games. The contributors include many of the leading voices in the burgeoning new field of philosophy of sport, plus a few other talented philosophers with a personal interest in baseball. A few of the contributors are also drawn from academic areas outside philosophy: statistics, law, and history. This volume gives the thoughtful baseball fan substancial material to think more deeply about. What moral issues are raised by the Intentional Walk? Do teams sometimes benefit from the self-interested behavior of their individual members? How can Zen be applied to hitting? Is it ethical to employ deception in sports? Can a game be defined by its written rules or are there also other constraints? What can the U.S. Supreme Court learn from umpiring? Why should baseball be the only industry exempt from antitrust laws? What part does luck play in any game of skill?

Infinite Baseball

Infinite Baseball
Author: Alva Noë
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0190928190

Baseball is a strange sport: it consists of long periods in which little seems to be happening, punctuated by high-energy outbursts of rapid fire activity. Because of this, despite ever greater profits, Major League Baseball is bent on finding ways to shorten games, and to tailor baseball to today's shorter attention spans. But for the true fan, baseball is always compelling to watch -and intellectually fascinating. It's superficially slow-pace is an opportunity to participate in the distinctive thinking practice that defines the game. If baseball is boring, it's boring the way philosophy is boring: not because there isn't a lot going on, but because the challenge baseball poses is making sense of it all. In this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva Noë explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score: a score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation. Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths. The book ranges from the nature of umpiring and the role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance enhancing drugs. Throughout, Noe's observations are surprising and provocative. Infinite Baseball is a book for the true baseball fan.

Baseball as a Road to God

Baseball as a Road to God
Author: John Sexton
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2013-03-07
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1101609737

The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.

Knowing the Score

Knowing the Score
Author: David Papineau
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2017-05-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0465094945

In Knowing the Score, philosopher David Papineau uses sports to illuminate some of modern philosophy's most perplexing questions. As Papineau demonstrates, the study of sports clarifies, challenges, and sometimes confuses crucial issues in philosophy. The tactics of road bicycle racing shed new light on questions of altruism, while sporting family dynasties reorient the nature v. nurture debate. Why do sports competitors choke? Why do fans think God will favor their team over their rivals? How can it be moral to deceive the umpire by framing a pitch? From all of these questions, and many more, philosophy has a great deal to learn. An entertaining and erudite book that ranges far and wide through the sporting world, Knowing the Score is perfect reading for armchair philosophers and Monday morning quarterbacks alike.

Rounding the Bases

Rounding the Bases
Author: Joseph L. Price
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2006
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780865549999

After identifying early conflicts between churches and baseball in the late-nineteenth century, Price examines the appropriation of baseball by the House of David, an early twentieth-century millennial Protestant community in southern Michigan. Turning then from historic intersections between baseball and religion, two chapters focus on the ways that baseball reelects religious myths. First, the omphalos myth about the origin and ordering of the world is reflected in the rituals and rules of the game. Then the myth of curses is explored in the culture of superstition that underlies the game. At the heart of the book is a sustained argument about how baseball functions as an American civil religion, affirming and sanctifying American identity, especially during periods of national crises such as wars and terrorist attacks. Building on this analysis of baseball as an America's civil religion, two chapters draw upon novels by W. P. Kinsella and David James Duncan to explore the sacramental potential of baseball and to align baseball with apocalyptic possibilities. The final chapter serves as a full confession, interpreting baseball affiliation stories as conversion narratives. In various ways

The Way of Baseball

The Way of Baseball
Author: Shawn Green
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-06-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1439191204

Major League All-Star Green shares how his baseball career has taught him to live life being fully present in every moment.

Fail Better

Fail Better
Author: Mark Kingwell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781771961530

A smart, accessible look into the philosophy of baseball, with a focus on its lessons for a life best lived.

Poker and Philosophy

Poker and Philosophy
Author: Eric Bronson
Publisher: Open Court
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2012-03-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 081269810X

Does God play cards with the universe? Do women have better poker faces than men? What’s the most existential poker movie ever made? Is life more meaningful when you go all-in? Is online poker really still poker? Poker and Philosophy ponders these questions and more, pitting young lions against old masters as the brashness of Phil Hellmuth meets the arrogance of Socrates, the recklessness of Doyle Brunson challenges the desperation of Dostoyevsky, and the coolness of Chris Moneymaker takes on the American tradition of capitalist ingenuity. This witty collection of essays demonstrates what serious card sharks have long known: winning big takes more than a good hand and a straight face. Stacking the metaphorical deck with a serious grounding in philosophy is the key to raking it in, because as Machiavelli proved long ago, it’s a lot better to be feared than loved, and lying is not the same as cheating.

Dear Baseball Gods: A Memoir

Dear Baseball Gods: A Memoir
Author: Dan Blewett
Publisher: Dan Blewett
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2019-04-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1727813936

Dear Baseball Gods, Why didn't you look out for him? Didn't he deserve better? He hustled, competed, and played the game the right way. What happened wasn't fair. A Second Comeback Dan sat by a tree, staring at the ground trying to decide what he would do next. The doctor had just explained that everything he worked for was now ruined. A second Tommy John surgery? Does anyone come back from that? Is my career over? Is this it? A Winding Road to the Top As a walk-on in college, Dan had to earn everything. He pitched on three hours sleep, lived in the clubhouse, played for a team that collapsed mid-season, and endured more arm pain than any kid should. A Way to Move On When finally forced to hang up his cleats, Dan looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the man peering back. If no longer a ballplayer...what would he do? What had been the point of it all? Who was he? The Deeper Side of Life as an Athlete In this philosophical memoir, written as a series of letters, you'll learn that the pinstripes don't wash off so easily.