Long, leisurely summer days playing pick-up games in the neighborhood sandlot; that first, awe-inspiring glimpse of a major league field; playing catch in the backyard; collecting baseball cards; poring over box scores--for many, baseball is the stuff of an American childhood. The thirty personal recollections in this book reflect the great variety of this uniquely American experience as well as the common spirit that unites all fans of baseball. An anecdotal history of America's pastime from the 1930s to the 1990s, Growing Up with Baseball shows us how it was watched, played, and lived not by superstar athletes and multi-millionaire owners but by everyday people. A missionary's son learns to read by comparing the sports reports in Time Magazine with Mel Allen's announcing over Armed Forces Radio; a young girl reaches puberty at approximately the same time that the Red Sox get their "impossible dream" pennant; boys gather by day to play ball on an old Pittsburgh tennis court, then camp there at night while listening to the Pirates on the radio; a young man encounters the Fogarty brothers, of Credence Clearwater Revival, on the sandlots of Berkeley. Here are the moments of youthful innocence and coming of age in America, from the big leagues to the backyard to the table-top game and baseball solitaire, all narrated with the warmth and spirit that are part of baseball's enduring charm.

"In this charming collection of essays, ordinary people recall their earliest encounters with baseball, describing sandlot pickup games, lazy hours listening to the radio and countless summer afternoons at ballparks. The result is both a vivid anecdotal history of America's pastime and a colorful portrait of how people lived and played in the middle and late 20th century. Many of these touching stories will seem pleasantly familiar to readers who engaged in such youthful rituals as poring over box scores, imitating players' batting stances, begging for autographs and, of course, visiting a big league park for the first time. Others are unusual and, at times, fascinating: a Seventh Day Adventist talks about how his first exposure to the wider world came through baseball; a missionary's son describes afternoons at Ebbets Field with his mother; and a number of writers describe the inventive tabletop games and backyard contests that they came up with to pass the time. Refreshingly, the writers manage to avoid the syrupy nostalgia that tends to infect too much writing on baseball. Land, a history professor, recruited his contributors through the Society for American Baseball Research and specifically asked that they focus on their own experiences without lamenting how times have changed. Because most of the authors are amateur writers (a large number happen to be teachers or academics) the quality of the essays varies, but the prose is almost uniformly clear and entertaining." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

(S. Michael Dewey, Aethlon)