Baseball Around the World, a vortex of America’s pastime, wherever you are

When is America’s pastime, not America’s pastime? Baseball Around the World, How the World Plays the Game addresses that question early on in the book. It also touches on the ‘boys of summer’ nickname, but thankfully skips any soft AOR songs that might reference that. Baseball Around the World is an intelligent illustrated book that looks at baseball, and how it’s done in different areas. It’s a great entry point for those who don’t know anything about the game but also provides dozens of instances where diehard fans will learn something too.

Fred Bowen is an author who I initially thought of whilst reading Baseball Around the World. This book is by Chris Singleton and Dean Burrell and is a completely different style than Bowen’s more narrative approach. What all three authors have in common is their ability to take something that is a fan’s fandom, and make it approachable and interesting to those that know very little about it. They create something that offers insight, instances, and proof of why millions around the world find said subject matter a great distraction to this thing called life.

 Granted to some, baseball is life, but Baseball Around the World this isn’t a book that just for them. It starts out by showing glimpses of how the game arrived in different areas and what it’s known for.  The color barrier being broken in the United States, the Cuban Revolution in Cuba, and the impossibly good food at games in South Korea are just a couple of examples. The book shows 13 different countries, each of which are provided with two pages, and similar factoid blurbs, complete with many photos and graphics to make reading the book more fun.

Fun, because those baseball people will jump headlong into a book with facts about the game. Those non-baseball people might need some coaxing. The level of coaxing, providing a carrot in front of reluctant, sports readers if you will, is very minimal in Baseball. Its colors, variety in graphics, font, font size, and photographs make every two pages play out like a maze, a great maze that you willingly enter and take your time navigating.

Sure I’ll read about how baseball arrived in Australia, then a bit about what the game is like today down under, and a couple of paragraphs about key players or their relationship to others in different continents. Suddenly you’ll find yourself carelessly tossing RBI facts, comparing leagues, players and arguing with a coworker about how the Little League World Series doesn’t receive the attention that it deserves. That last bit was obviously a bit exaggerated, but it alludes to how softly the Baseball Around the World sneaks into your otherwise sports-free bookshelf.

Those third-grade readers should be able to read most of the book. Fourth and fifth-grade readers will be able to read it with ease. The block set up display with its content will help all of those ages easily digest the information, and then move onto another geographical aspect of the sport. Those older readers will also appreciate the sources, credits and notes on the authors at the back of the book. This is especially true for those fourth or fifth-grade students who are tasked with doing a non-fiction report on something. For those students, I encourage them to go beyond the exotic animals that are too often the subject of those reports. Try doing a report on baseball in Japan, dig deeper with some additional resources and really knock the report out of the park….to borrow a baseball phrase.

Baseball Around the World, How the World Plays the Game is by Chris Singleton and Dean Burrell and available on Bushel & Peck Books.

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