This commemorative book will reinforce the game’s historical status as our national pastime. Much has happened to our world, and the COVID-19 virus has gripped our country. It’s a good time for a big and beautiful book featuring the hopes and desires of the fans who have continued to love baseball through both the good and bad times.

Soldiers played it at times when the guns were silent during the Civil War. Immigrants arriving in the U.S. at the turn of the century learned to love it as they learned to love and be part of this country. Burrowing into our history, baseball became part of the linkage between generations—“fathers playing catch with sons,” as poet Donald Hall wrote of the fabric of our national life. Presidents have inaugurated baseball’s new seasons for nearly a century.

Basketball, and especially football, have challenged baseball’s supremacy over the last 40 years, but while both offer immediate thrills, neither has the possibility of becoming part of American mythology in the way baseball has.

The baseball fans are a breed apart. Their dedication shows why the root word of “fan,” in fact, is “fanatic.” Baseball addicts them because it’s a game of statistics to be memorized and argued about; a game whose historical epochs are to be analyzed and whose players are to be compared; and a game whose past is always prologue to its present. More than its competitors, baseball always has belonged to the fan:

Generations of kids who saw their first game as part of a “knothole gang”; who played the game themselves in sandlots or on crowded city streets where manhole covers served as bases; and who maintained their loyalties to teams and players in later years as a way of keeping faith with the dreams they once dreamed in their younger years.

This book will put the focus back on the fan, where it belongs. It will function as a sort of trip log of where we’ve been as a culture. It also will be a journey through the nation’s dreams. It will show people in the midst of their active lives thinking about baseball, what it means generally and what it specifically means to them. These are people who hold onto their dreams and have refused to let baseball die.

The completed product will be a coffee-table book. As envisioned, it will be a photographic/short-essay publication that poses the question to people of all walks of life– “What does baseball mean to me?” Designed to capture the transcendent qualities unique to baseball, this book will feature several uncommon elements that will contribute to its appeal to a wide audience.

The stories will be from a cross section of men and women reflecting a wide and unusual range of fan interest, from average individuals who have made baseball a central focus of their lives to prominent and notable Americans whose passion for the game is legendary. We anticipate uncovering hundreds of riveting and informative narratives.