Robert Benson Writer

THE GAME:
One Man, Nine Innings, A Love Affair with Baseball

One of my publishing friends asked me if I would like to write a book about baseball. I was not about to look askance at such a gift. If someone tells you to take your base, you take your base.

At almost any point in time, if I had my choice, I would be at the ballpark. I would be in Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium watching the big leaguers. Or I would be at the ballpark not too far from my house watching the local minor league team. Or I would be over at the school yard watching my children play. Better yet, I would be throwing batting practice to them and their schoolmates and hitting grounders and taking throws.
Whenever you run into me, wherever it is that we are, and whatever it is that we are supposed to be doing, it is wise to remember that I would generally rather be at the ballpark....

If one is looking for non-baseball people to write a book about baseball, one could find plenty of people who know more about it than I do. In my own small circle of friends, there are several people who are better candidates for such work.

Throwing out the first pitch
Greer Stadium, 2004

I know a woman who was in the stadium the day that Bobby Thompson hit the home run to win the 1951 pennant for the Giants and break the hearts of Brooklyn Dodger fans. I have a friend who has long had season tickets at Yankee Stadium. I have a friend who played the game at the minor league level and almost made it to the show. And one who coaches the game, and one who has reported on it for the newspapers, and one who used to work for the Seattle Mariners. I have another friend who watches every Atlanta Braves game on television, taping them when he has to be on the road the way some people tape soap operas. I even know a guy who is the chaplain for the New York Yankees. My best credential is that I have season tickets to a AAA park.…
Any one of these people knows more about the game than I do. The difference is that nobody chose them to write a book; they chose me. So I said yes very quickly. I was afraid they might withdraw the offer if I hesitated.…

Writers never really know why they are chosen to be writers, of course, and neither do I. I just was.
    I was chosen long ago to try to write sentences. To be more precise the thing chose me. ‘You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball,’ wrote Jim Bouton, ‘and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.’ Writing has been, and still is, exactly that way for me.
    It turns out that a fresh bottle of ink, a love for word and story and memory, a long and deep love for the game, and, of course, a lucky bounce somehow qualified me to write this book.
    At least that is what got me sitting here, pen in hand, assigned to write a book about baseball, to tell some stories about the game I love best, with no rule other than that I am supposed to give it to the people who asked me to write it when I am finished and along the way to try to say what I have learned from the most mystical and magical and mysterious game of all.
    I feel like I just stole home.

Excerpted from The Game by Robert Benson
(Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, copyright 2001, ISBN: 1585423416)