{"product_id":"book-cwv1","title":"Why Baseball Matters","description":"Baseball, first dubbed the \"national pastime\" in print in 1856, is the country's most tradition-bound sport. Despite remaining popular and profitable into the twenty-first century, the game is losing young fans. Furthermore, baseball's greatest charm—a clockless suspension of time—is also its greatest liability in a culture of digital distraction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese paradoxes are explored by the historian and passionate baseball fan Susan Jacoby in a book that is both a love letter to the game and a tough-minded analysis of the current challenges to its special position—in reality and myth—in American culture. The concise but wide-ranging analysis moves from the Civil War—when many soldiers played ball in northern and southern prisoner-of-war camps—to interviews with top baseball officials and young men who prefer playing online \"fantasy baseball\" to attending real games.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJacoby argues forcefully that the major challenge to baseball today is a shortened attention span at odds with a long game in which great hitters fail two out of three times. Without sanitizing this basic problem, \u003ci\u003eWhy Baseball Matters\u003c\/i\u003e reminds us that the game has retained its grip on our hearts precisely because it has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reinvent itself in times of immense social change.","brand":"Tantor","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49379487121712,"sku":"BDcwv1","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio CD","offer_id":49379487154480,"sku":"ZEcwv1","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio MP3-CD","offer_id":49379487187248,"sku":"ZMcwv1","price":45.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio CD [40]","offer_id":49379487220016,"sku":"40cwv1","price":32.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/cwv1-Square-cover.jpg?v=1779186043","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-cwv1","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}