The Game ─ One Man, Nine Innings, A Love Affair with Baseball

In the spirit of Field of Dreams, a remarkable book about baseball and the meaning of life. A game between the Iowa Cubs and the Nashville Sounds at an AAA park in Nashville provides the lens through which Robert Benson explores the game of baseball and the meaning of life in The Game. It is an ordinary week night game in the early part of the season between two teams that will finish far out of first place in the Pacific League. But Benson shows us how in this average game of baseball, just as in our everyday lives, the routine plays-the seemingly minor yet vital moves, empty of bravado-eventually win the game.

In beautifully measured prose, Benson links events in his life to the innings in this baseball game. Married to a woman who can quote baseball stats with the best of them, and with two children who share his love for the game (his teenage daughter made the decision early on that she would be the first woman to play for the Yankees), Benson explores the ways in which baseball has always somehow shaped and defined his life. The Game is an extraordinary testament to the everlasting wonder and magic of the great American pastime.

Robert Benson is the author of Living Prayer, Venite, and Between the Dreaming and the Coming True. He lives in Nashville.