Covering all the bases

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/04/2025 (509 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the start of a new baseball season, a time of hope and hopefully joy for players and fans alike.

It’s a chance to sit in the stands and cheer for your home team, watch the pros on sports channels or unfold your deck chair on the grass and watch your child honing their skills on a neighbourhood diamond.

Whatever your preference, Ontario writer and baseball aficionado Andrew Forbes has it covered in his new collection of essays. His writes with a love of baseball — its history, its stars and quirky players — and, as could be expected from a man so immersed in the game, he has a few bones to pick with newer, so-called innovations.

Forbes, the author of two previous baseball collections — The Utility of Boredom and The Only Way is the Steady Way — plumbs the history of the game, when major-league players had to work in the off-season to supplement meagre baseball earnings.

“For every Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge — mega superstars on their way to billionaire status — there are thousands of players who’ve had to supplement sparse baseball earnings with offseason jobs,” he writes. He cites New York Yankees great Mickey Mantle having to mine zinc and lead in early days.

Hubert Shelby “Shucks” Pruett, a southpaw pitcher in the 1920s, has a different tack on that tale. He was celebrated as a pitcher for, amazingly, “owning Babe Ruth” at the plate, using his baseball earnings to finance his medical studies during the winter and eventually opening a practice after leaving the game. The nickname “Shucks” comes from it having been the roughest word in his vocabulary.

As much as Forbes laments the poor working conditions early in the life of organized ball, he regrets the loss of other aspects such as on-field umpires making all the calls and being respected for it.

Modern instant replay has changed how the game is played, he writes. In the old days, a runner might be a “titch late” getting his foot on the base and still get a safe call from the ump. If one team didn’t like it, they accepted it because a call would go their way later.

But now (and you can hear Forbes gritting his teeth as he writes) instead of relaying on instinct, the umpire gets New York on the line and faceless, generic specialists make the call from watching video. “I resent instant replay because it’s so precise… It’s better to let imprecise legend reign,” he adds.

Forbes isn’t a luddite, simply a ball fan with a sense of history and a feel for the original game, even as he recognizes baseball is now played by millionaires working for billionaires.

He also decries the inescapable flood of commercials for online sports betting, calling it the single greatest threat to his enjoyment of baseball and all other professional sports.

Forbes covers many topics in this well-written, well-researched collection such as the history of the the Sporting News, the bible of baseball, with its record of the men who made a living playing ball, proof that 180,000 players suited up to play pro ball for anywhere between one and 3,652 games.

Forbes’ essay on volunteering as a coach, groundskeeper or whatever is needed for his son’s teams is a delight, and a look inside the effort and love that keeps an interest in baseball (or any sport) alive and well.

He takes a look at independent leagues, such as the now-defunct Northern League (where the modern version of the Winnipeg Goldeyes started playing), by visiting Minnesota’s St. Paul Saints, where a key owner said the league was founded on the idea there’s one last hurrah in all of us. The independent leagues appealed to fans precisely because of that energy, Forbes writes.

If Forbes hasn’t hit a home run with this enjoyable survey of baseball past and present, he’s certainly hit a clean triple.

Chris Smith is a Winnipeg writer.