Growing Up with Baseball: How We Loved and Played the Game (review)

Baseball has a long history as summer entertainment for American families. Whenever people gather, baseball and weather become conversational topics, and every spectator has a favorite baseball story to share.

Gary Land observes that baseball is not the same today as it was thirty years ago; it is organized. Informal games of baseball are uncommon today. Most of the participation today takes place within organized leagues and not on the streets or on the vacant lots. The personal experiences of young people today are vastly different from those of their parents or grandparents.

From his observations, Land determined that an effort to preserve the memories of earlier generations must be made. He sought individuals and asked them to record their comments regarding their original love for the game, the ways they played the game when they were young, and the baseball games they invented and played off the field. Growing Up with Baseball compiles thirty-two first-person vignettes. Land used these stories as written—without editing the style or language—and he categorized them within these three areas.

There is an element of nostalgia within the entries in the book, but it appears that the individual authors tried to describe their actual experiences. The accounts in the third section are particularly interesting. The authors are from varied backgrounds and, using their imaginations, they developed some interesting games off the field. One particularly imaginative story was by Edward J. Rielly, who grew up on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin where he was forced to invent teams and the only other player in his game of baseball was his barn. In that same section, Delmer Davis, who grew up in Napa Valley, describes his obsession with the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. He recounts how he adapted the traditional game to his individual situation in a variation he called Lawn Solitaire. Davis explains that he lived in a rural neighborhood void of children and baseball fields. But, he was obsessed with baseball, and his mother, an ardent Seventh-Day Adventist who allowed few games, tolerated his version of baseball. Davis laid out his field in his front yard. For a ball, he used the growth created by wasp larva which formed on oak trees.

Section 1, "Loving the Game," features selections in which the authors recall going to ballparks and learning the essence of the game. They remember significant events of games where they experienced lifelong memories. In section 2, the authors describe how they played the game. Some improvised the necessary equipment or preserved it with duct tape or screws; others played in small areas where the rules had to be adapted for their game.

The thirty-two stories in this collection are conversational, and it is easy to identify with the authors' love for the game. Land has successfully collected original essays from authors who have only their love of baseball and their memories in focus as they carefully describe their feelings, emotions, and attitudes toward the all-American pastime.