![]() ![]() As the first section makes you think about theories, the second section makes you consider our current world of leisure.The third section is a smart man's paean to his beloved sport of baseball. In others, such as the issues around steroids and cheating, we can only wonder how he might have handled the 90s or 2000s. ![]() With twenty-some additional years, we can see Giamatti's predictions coming through in some places, such as his concern over athlete's salaries and the cost of the sport becoming a barrier between the athlete and the fans. This section is somewhat more practical and less theoretical. ![]() This is a philosophical, abstract section beautiful but (as other reviewers have noted) deceptively deep in places.In the second section of the book, Giamatti considers the role of sports in cities, pointing out the social benefits and tensions in our arenas. When we play a game, we choose to create the game's world for a while, and even when we participate as spectators, we hope to see a spectacular performance within that created world. ![]() Many areas of our public and private lives have some element of "work" to them, some compulsion to produce in a particular way, but in our games, we live by the rules which we choose for no particular reason at all. Drawing heavily from Aristotle and Shakespeare, he argues that the mark of truly free people is in how they use their freedom. In this magnificent gem of a book, Bart Giamatti argues for a classical view of sports and leisure generally. ![]()
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