The Art Of Fielding

I guess I'm not so good at judging books by their covers because I didn't realize The Art of Fielding would be about baseball.  Yeah, it's a sports book.  But I still enjoyed it.  Like Chad Harbach notes, and I had never thought of before, baseball is a difficult thing. Unlike music or art where your very best work effort is the final product, baseball is an average of all your efforts including your best moments and your errors.  In this story, Henry Schrimshander, a skinny shortstop from South Dakota is recruited to Westish College in Northeast Wisconsin by a ball player and mentor Mike Schwarts.  By his third year in college, he is playing ball so well the scouts are recruiting him for the big leagues. The book is about the art of fielding and the relationships Henry has in his life including his mentor Mike, his roommate Owen, his love interest Pella, and the president of the college, Guert Affenlight.  It's a good story.  I never would have read it though if I knew it was about baseball.  Baseball is the medium Chad Harbach used to get the philosophical points across.