RULES OF THE GAME—Baseball since its 19th century inception has been called
America’s game because it is a metaphor for life in general. Comparing baseball to life is certainly not original
but there’s a new book available that makes baseball stats, rules and
situations entertaining, informative and best of all: funny while being
accurate.
Baseball umpire Jim
Tosches, who has a wonderful command of the essay, has self-published “The
Rules Abide,” a thinking fan’s guide to baseball rules,
[www.therulesabide.com].
This Boston area
transplant, who is professionally umpiring in San Diego, has translated his
fascination with the history of the game and the familiar and unfamiliar rules
that govern baseball.
 |
| Author Jim Tosches |
Silly as it sounds this
rule book is a love story, a romance rekindled to be shared by millions of fans
around the world. Tosches’s essay style
of writing lifts this book from a “trade text” to literature. [Editor’s note: Big time publishers should
grab this book. It will make the NY
Times best seller list with the right marketing].
This umpire’s affection for
the game is obvious. He uses humor to
make points about baseball and life without cornball or preaching. It’s enlightened writing that after reading
it will grow your appreciation for the game by knowing how the rules really
work.
Even the most ardent fan
will read something new from Tosches work (it’s available on Amazon.com) and he
uses real major league game situations as examples of how certain rules
work. As an example, here is an example
of Tosches at his best weaving Major League history and pop culture into the
conversation. Reminiscing about a
favorite childhood pitcher, "memories from a shoebox filled with baseball
cards," he describes to pitching motion of Cuban right hander Louis Tiant"...
“...Louie’s delivery was downright sublime. Artistic
in form, genius in design as he spun and contorted to create a smokescreen of
body parts out from which a baseball would appear. He seemed to have some
circus-freak ability to rotate his head, torso and hips at different speeds as
if they were not all attached to the same spine. Raising hands high above his
head, he would turn his back completely to the hitter, bob his head with a look
to the heavens and then uncoil with a leg kick worthy of a mixed martial arts
KO and a side-arm, over-the-top or anything-in-between release. If you can imagine the old cartoon character
The Tasmanian Devil as a pitcher, then you can imagine Luis Tiant’s form, -
like some defense mechanism evolved over eons in the jungle, designed to
mesmerize and kill prey...”
Tosches also connects the
dots between the machinations of the game and the passion for playing it. Before detailing the regulations affecting
the batter in the box, he teases with the following observation about a scene
in "Bull Durham":
“...The scene conveys the heartbreak of a broken
dream, the fate of a man named “Crash.” Fictional as the story is, the thought
of being a major leaguer is a very real dream for every kid who loves to play
baseball. While the balance of a pro career might be teetering on the outcome
of so many at-bats over a long season in the minors, amateur baseball is
parceled out in short and fleeting seasons. The games are fewer and the at-bats
ever more precious, each one an opportunity to do something good for the team,
impress a coach, boost one’s self-confidence or perhaps give the gift of
parental pride to a mom or dad in the bleachers. If none of those will work,
the right thing to do always is to pay it forward and extend the inning so the
next guy in line can get his extra chance too. Whatever the outcome, these
numbered opportunities command the batter to approach every at-bat as though it
were his last because you just never know, it might be. Combined with the
pitcher’s equal and opposite obligations and sense of duty, we have a timeless
and cardinal confrontation at the game’s core...”
Available thru Amazon.com
Or email: Jim.Tosches@gmail.com
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