Baseball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Batter’s Box

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 substantial 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?

There’s no place like home! / Joe Kraus —
Minnesota’s Homer Hanky jurisprudence / Paul Horan and Jason Solomon —
Should cubs fans be committed? / Thomas D. Senor —
Taking one for the team / Willie Young —
There are no ties at first base / Ted Cohen —
Taking umpiring seriously / J.S. Russell —
Baseball, cheating, and tradition / Randolph Feezell —
There’s no lying in baseball (wink, wink) / Mark J. Hamilton —
Democracy and dissent / Eric Bronson —
Baseball and the search for an American moral identity / William J. Morgan —
Negro leagues and the contradictions of social Darwinism / Alex Ruck and Rob Ruck —
We’re American too / Pellom McDaniels —
Zen of hitting / Gregory Bassham —
Japanese baseball and its warrior ways / Michael Brannigan —
Numbers game / Jay Bennett and Aryn Martin —
Women playing hardball / Leslie Heaphy —
Walking Barry Bonds / R. Scott Kretchhmar —
Socrates at the ballpark / Heather L. Reid