The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
jbmorgan86's review against another edition
4.0
Baseball is in a time of crisis. Millennials and post-millennials find it more challenging to watch a three-hour game because of attention spans that have been shortened by smartphones and tablets. Fewer African-Americans are watching and playing in the MLB than in previous decades. Women fans seem to be an untapped audience. Overall, baseball is losing out to other major sports. Fantasy sports create fans who cheer for their players but may care less about an actual team in real life. What is a league to do? Why Baseball Matters (a bit of a misnomer of a book title) investigates these questions.
The powers-that-be seem to be stuck on the idea that game time must be shortened. Therefore, play clocks have been added, replays have been restricted, etc. The minor league has even tried starting a runner at second in extra inning games. Jacoby argues, however, that all of this is missing the point. All of these actions may only shave a few minutes off a game. No significant change has been made. Besides, all of this is treating a symptom, not the cause of the problem. The problem is that fans in the 21st century have shorter attention spans and are constantly distracted while watching. (Jacoby also mentions other interesting suggestions like having a defensive team and offensive team [like football] or rotating positions [like volleyball]).
Some stadiums have attempted to insert more entertainment into the live game with kiss cams, games on the big screen, pools, rocking climbing walls, restaurants, shopping, etc. Jacoby wonders if a stadium can do something to educate the fans about the subtleties of the game rather than contribute to the problem of distraction.
At the end of the day, Jacoby is not a baseball purist that demands rigid adherence to a tradition. She admits that baseball has had to reinvent itself after the invention of new technologies (radio, TV), social changes (integration), and scandals (the '94 strike, the steroid era). Baseball will continue to evolve and will survive.
I really enjoyed reading this book. However, it seemed really disjointed. Jacoby seemed to rehash a lot of the same ideas (Millennial, African-American, Hispanic, and women fandom) without any clear direction. For that, Why Baseball Matters is a 4-start instead of a 5-star read.
The powers-that-be seem to be stuck on the idea that game time must be shortened. Therefore, play clocks have been added, replays have been restricted, etc. The minor league has even tried starting a runner at second in extra inning games. Jacoby argues, however, that all of this is missing the point. All of these actions may only shave a few minutes off a game. No significant change has been made. Besides, all of this is treating a symptom, not the cause of the problem. The problem is that fans in the 21st century have shorter attention spans and are constantly distracted while watching. (Jacoby also mentions other interesting suggestions like having a defensive team and offensive team [like football] or rotating positions [like volleyball]).
Some stadiums have attempted to insert more entertainment into the live game with kiss cams, games on the big screen, pools, rocking climbing walls, restaurants, shopping, etc. Jacoby wonders if a stadium can do something to educate the fans about the subtleties of the game rather than contribute to the problem of distraction.
At the end of the day, Jacoby is not a baseball purist that demands rigid adherence to a tradition. She admits that baseball has had to reinvent itself after the invention of new technologies (radio, TV), social changes (integration), and scandals (the '94 strike, the steroid era). Baseball will continue to evolve and will survive.
I really enjoyed reading this book. However, it seemed really disjointed. Jacoby seemed to rehash a lot of the same ideas (Millennial, African-American, Hispanic, and women fandom) without any clear direction. For that, Why Baseball Matters is a 4-start instead of a 5-star read.
guinness74's review against another edition
5.0
Certainly I did not need to read a book entitled ‘Why Baseball Matters’ because, to me, it matters a great deal. But given the details in this book, I find that I’m in an ever-shrinking minority and that most of my peers have either lost interest in the national pastime or never had an interest to begin with. I will say that I do, occasionally, find myself ‘not in the game,’ but I still have a passion for issues between the lines and, though my statistics abilities are subpar, I still delight in the box score and the incredible minutiae of stats that forms the history of Major League Baseball. All of this is to say that Jacoby has written an excellent book detailing what is happening to Baseball and how it doesn’t necessarily need to be fixed (at least not in the ways that are being currently tried and/or suggested), rather that folks need to be reintroduced to the game and engaged with it on its cerebral and leisurely levels.
howwoolatthemoon's review
4.0
I think the book didn't totally deliver on the title, although I do think baseball matters, and I enjoyed the book's discussion on baseball.
bghillman's review against another edition
5.0
This was an enjoyable book that makes a fairly forceful argument about baseball. More constructive work could have been done on how baseball is going to be baseball and that its "boringness" may be a problem of narrative. I think baseball will be fine no matter what.
qrhodes7's review against another edition
3.0
certainly this book has its bright spots that make one appreciate the patient game of baseball, but the author also acts as if it is near a sin to appreciate faster paced games.
janp's review against another edition
3.0
Read/skimmed. Jacoby is a huge baseball fan (White Sox, now Mets). I enjoyed reading about her love of the game and how it came about. She also analyzes the popularity of the game over the ages and the reason for ups and downs in attendance and specific fan bases such as teens in this time of digital distraction. And the allure of fantasy baseball. She ends by offering "suggestions to owners, players, and anyone else who cares" to woo back the masses.
michaelnlibrarian's review against another edition
2.0
I found this title when I looked through the "top 100 books of 2018" according to the Washington Post - as an adult convert to an interest in baseball, I was curious what I might find here.
"Why X Matter" (where X is various different things) is a series of books from Yale University Press. Whether they sought Susan Jacoby out to write this about baseball or it was other way round is not clear. Jacoby has written on various historical topics - her best known work is "The Age of American Unreason." She is not someone from the baseball "industry," that is, a former player or coach, or a sports writer or other person with a financial connection of any kind to the sport. She does profess a significant person interest in baseball as a fan of the Mets in particular and watching and studying (as a fan) baseball for much of her life in general.
I wanted to like this book. For one thing, lately I am particularly attracted to books I can get into that are less than 200 pages - enjoy, complete, move on to the next one. I finished this (about 175 pages) in relatively short order but more or less forced myself through the last chapter, not wanting to call it quits without completing the thing at that point.
But . . . I wasn't that thrilled with this. The book has five chapters. The introduction and first two (of five) chapters set out some background, but after that the next three chapters seem to go round and round in circles making much the same points over and over with slight variations and anecdotes. This seemed like it could have been easily reduced to an article in The New Yorker, making the same points more succinctly (even if at some length!).
A lot of what Jacoby thinks is problematic has to do with the shrinking attention span of the rising generation(s) with their smartphone in hand in contrast to the (in her view - probably right) mostly misguided efforts of Major League Baseball to shorten the average length of games as the antidote. But some of her commentary and examples don't fit in with my own observations attending about 30 games a year - I don't agree that by default you can assume anyone engaging periodically with a smartphone while at a baseball game is in effect a lost cause in terms of sustainability as a successful future engaged fan of the game. She mentions the At Bat app, but doesn't note that it allows a fan to check up on the umpire's calls of balls and strikes more or less in real time. And Jacoby seems to have a fixed idea of what successful engagement with a baseball game should be, or small number of variants - my own experience is that there can be many different versions of enjoying baseball (at the ball park) that are all good in that they reflect long term commitment to repetition (ie, going to more games).
Of course perhaps it is just that Jacoby is a Mets fan that is my problem. Could be . . .
"Why X Matter" (where X is various different things) is a series of books from Yale University Press. Whether they sought Susan Jacoby out to write this about baseball or it was other way round is not clear. Jacoby has written on various historical topics - her best known work is "The Age of American Unreason." She is not someone from the baseball "industry," that is, a former player or coach, or a sports writer or other person with a financial connection of any kind to the sport. She does profess a significant person interest in baseball as a fan of the Mets in particular and watching and studying (as a fan) baseball for much of her life in general.
I wanted to like this book. For one thing, lately I am particularly attracted to books I can get into that are less than 200 pages - enjoy, complete, move on to the next one. I finished this (about 175 pages) in relatively short order but more or less forced myself through the last chapter, not wanting to call it quits without completing the thing at that point.
But . . . I wasn't that thrilled with this. The book has five chapters. The introduction and first two (of five) chapters set out some background, but after that the next three chapters seem to go round and round in circles making much the same points over and over with slight variations and anecdotes. This seemed like it could have been easily reduced to an article in The New Yorker, making the same points more succinctly (even if at some length!).
A lot of what Jacoby thinks is problematic has to do with the shrinking attention span of the rising generation(s) with their smartphone in hand in contrast to the (in her view - probably right) mostly misguided efforts of Major League Baseball to shorten the average length of games as the antidote. But some of her commentary and examples don't fit in with my own observations attending about 30 games a year - I don't agree that by default you can assume anyone engaging periodically with a smartphone while at a baseball game is in effect a lost cause in terms of sustainability as a successful future engaged fan of the game. She mentions the At Bat app, but doesn't note that it allows a fan to check up on the umpire's calls of balls and strikes more or less in real time. And Jacoby seems to have a fixed idea of what successful engagement with a baseball game should be, or small number of variants - my own experience is that there can be many different versions of enjoying baseball (at the ball park) that are all good in that they reflect long term commitment to repetition (ie, going to more games).
Of course perhaps it is just that Jacoby is a Mets fan that is my problem. Could be . . .
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