Alva Noe's Infinite Baseball: Notes From a Philosopher at the Ballpark sounds so intriguing. What you get, though, is a hodgepodge of previously published pieces with a tacked on introduction. By the time I got through the introduction, I was already getting disappointed. One theme he comes back to is that baseball is a game of responsibility--we're always trying to assign credit or blame for what happens. Such credit or blame ultimately takes the form of numbers, but baseball is in his eyes not a numbers game. It is this last argument that he has the most difficulty explaining and defending. In the intro, I kept stopping and thinking, "This isn't accurate." Some of the assertions in the intro:

--Baseball is an infinite game. Finite games, like chess, "can be simulated with computers" (6). This would come as some surprise to the many enthusiasts of Out of the Park Baseball, a hugely popular baseball simulation.

--Baseball is considered slow because "only explosive hits and big plays count as action" (22). No, baseball is considered slow because the length of time it takes to do the same things has risen quite a lot over time, 40 or so minutes on average during my lifetime.

--he argues that data should not be used to think about medical issues, such as breastfeeding, and so should also not be used to judge baseball. My own opinion is that this is terrible advice. He caps it off with the factually incorrect statement that with a pitcher, "the manager's decision to leave him in, or call on a relief pitcher, is not one that can be decided with the numbers" (25). Yes, human judgment is in there, but those decisions are fundamentally based on numbers.

--Baseball is different because kids model the stances of their favorite hitters (he puts pose in italics (27). Youth games are "rituals." How is this different from other sports? You know kids try to shoot like Steph Curry or do touchdown dances like their favorite receiver.

The intro lays out no framework, philosophical or otherwise, so my advice is to read the chapters, or better yet find the chapters in their original form online. He has some interesting insights into why steroids shouldn't be considered a problem for the Hall of Fame Well, actually, that's the main interesting thing. He asks whether any variety of medical assistance (even Tommy John surgery) should be considered unfair advantage. Fair questions, and worth asking. That would actually be a better basis for a philosophical discussion.

But for me, this book boiled down to a lot of unhappiness about sabermetrics. He mentions and criticizes Keith Law's book Smart Baseball but really just reinforces Law's main argument. I agree that Law's own take is too intentionally insulting, but his arguments are solid. Numbers don't tell us everything, but they are being used in creative and productive ways to understand current and future performance. Noé says you cannot use numbers to determine value, period (67). He ends with his own shot that underlines his lack of sabermetric understanding: "Want to know what happened on the field? You'd better take a look, and give it some thought" (67). Guess what: Law and everyone else who judges baseball players go to endless minor league games to scout, while using the numbers. If you ignore the data, you will lose.

My advice to Noé is to accept the fact that numbers are more important than he wants to believe, but that they do not mess with the beauty of baseball. And a 2.5 hour game is no less enjoyable and fulfilling than a 3.5 hour one. As someone who lives on the east coast and follows a west cost team, infinite baseball with games that start at 10:10 pm are awful.

From https://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2019/07/alva-noes-infinite-baseball.html

I don’t think I ever got over the fact that this guy spelled Joe Panik’s name wrong throughout one of the first essays. And no one else on the editorial staff caught it! Ugh. As a San Francisco Giants fan that left me butt-hurt. His metaphors were too overextended and I really disagree with a lot of his observations. I kind of expected this book to sound a lot like having a conversation with a friend with whom you share a love for baseball (a la some of the really great gems on Bleacher Report) but it was, for lack of better word, boring. Maybe that’s what he was going for since the ongoing joke is that baseball itself is boring?

Baseball occupies a unique place in American sports. It's one of the few that's truly an American creation; it is quintessentially linked to the nation's heritage. And our summers.

As Noe points out, there's far more writing about baseball — memoirs (even by the likes of Doris Kearns Goodwin), novels, scholarship, etc. — than most other professional athletic endeavors combined. Why is that? Noe argues that it's because baseball is so much more human than other sports. It's a battle of wills between individuals — pitcher and batter, most often — in which heroes and goats are instantly made, usually in the same moment.

This is a short collection of short essays. At times, it gets a bit too philosophical for my tastes. But in general, Noe shares some ideas about the game that generally made me go, "Huh, I've never thought of it that way." He argues that Tommy John surgery and steroids are basically the same thing. He writes that baseball's boring nature is part of what makes it so enjoyable and even vital in our fast-paced world. He muses on the beauty of keeping score by hand.

If you enjoy America's pastime, Infinite Baseball is a very fun little book, even if it delves just a little too much into heady philosophy at a couple points.

What a hardass. Some good thoughts though. Very clearly essays written for the internet.