Michael Coulter, professor of political science. George Will’s Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball is perhaps the best book of the 1990s on baseball. Will shows us that baseball—while beloved by children—is not merely a kids’ game. He demonstrates the work that must be done to become an excellent baseball player. He devotes a chapter each to managers, pitchers, batters and defenders with each chapter centered around a single figure. The best book of the current decade is Baseball Between the Numbers, edited by Jonah Keri. Each chapter poses a question about the game and then offers analyses of possible answers. The work helps to understand what makes for a winning team and which players contribute more to winning.

Bill Birmingham, professor of computer science. For fans, the first week of April is the greatest time of the year: no marks in the L column, all the pitchers look great, and the hitters—the hitters are going to have their greatest year yet! We rationalize all the problems at spring training as due to rookie mistakes and second-rate players trying to make the squad. Depending on the team, bliss lasts anywhere from two weeks to two months—the exception being Yankee fans: no matter how bad the dog days of summer get, Yankee fans get redemption in September (tough luck, Boston). For us Pirate fans, it may only be a matter of days until we realize it will be just like last year. Here’s a list of Birmingham favorites: George Will, Men at Work—an excellent writer writing about his excellent passion. David Halberstam, October 1964—Mantle, Brock, and Gibson; what more do you need? Darryl Brock, If I Never Get Back: a Novel—travel back to the 1860s and tour with the Cincinnati Red Stockings. With these Birmingham family favorites, enjoy another season of the greatest game ever played, the perfect blend of individual and team play, stamina, and intelligence. Pope Benedict XVI has opined that God listens to Mozart; of this, I have no doubt: I can only image how good it sounds on Heaven’s Organ between innings.

Finally, here are a few of my own, from the Kengor bookshelf: Al Stump’s biography of Ty Cobb, Cobb: A Biography, which needs to be read to be believed; Robert Creamer’s Baseball in ‘41; David Halberstam’s The Teammates; Philip J. Lowry’s Green Cathedral’s; Bob Smizik’s The Pittsburgh Pirates; Eliot Asinof’s Eight Men Out; Lawrence Ritter’s Lost Ballparks; William Hageman’s Honus: The Life and Times of a Baseball Hero. Also, I recommend just about any book on Ted Williams, who was John Wayne in real life. If Ted had pursued political office instead of baseball, his face undoubtedly would today be chiseled into Mt Rushmore. The most up-to-date biography on Williams is Leigh Montville’s Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero.

This is good collection of fine books on the finest of all sports. Only baseball would be worthy of its own reading list. There is no better way to pass the time this summer than to read books and watch baseball, or, better, to read books about baseball—a way to pass the time that ought to be every American’s national pastime.

Paul Kengor is associate professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. His most recent book is The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins, 2006).