In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of Baseball People

An oral history with academic credentials behind it, In the Ballpark is a clever hybrid of sober scholarship and good fun. Conceived by a practicing anthropologist who once played Minor League ball, the book takes you into the game's corners to tell the stories of the people, most of whom you don't even know are there, who make baseball the experience it is. This isn't a book extolling on-field glory--though Yankee centerfielder Bernie Williams is among its voices; it's a book primarily about the game's grunts.

Shuffling between the farm teams and the Show, Ballpark resonates with the first-person narratives of beer vendors, ushers, clubbies, trainers, denizens of the press box, and front-office personnel--even the Phillie Phanatic. If some are more fascinating than others--hey, that's baseball--all contribute to the book's evocative texture. An epilogue in the form of an essay dissects baseball work with the dry edge of erudition, footnotes and all, offering such wisdom as "When we compare work in the minor leagues with the big leagues we find the higher one ascends the professional baseball ladder, the larger the staff and the more complex the division of labor." Don't hold that against it. If Ballpark's extra innings flag, the individual voices that precede it are wonderfully different, lively, and generally filled with charm. --Jeff Silverman