When a piece of sports writing references, in the first few pages of the first chapter, Shakespeare, Thomas Carlyle, historian Allen Guttman, and Welsh metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan (1621-95), you can be pretty sure it's about baseball. No other sport seems to produce quite the kind of prose baseball does. Bart Giamatti was a master of that prose -- his "The Green Fields of the Mind" is a stands out even among the many great pieces of writing collected in Baseball: A Literary Anthology -- but also a master of the quality of thought required to keep that sort of prose from being pretentious or downright ridiculous. "Take Time for Paradise" won't take long to read, but its reflections on the nature of cities, of sports and leisure, and ultimate of being human, will stick with you for a long time.

The second section of this essay, called "Community," includes some thoughts on why home plate on a baseball diamond is called "home." It brought to mind, of all things, George Carlin's bit contrasting pastoral baseball, where the object is to get safely home, with martial football, where the objective is to penetrate the opponent's defense and rush or throw a bomb into his end zone. Carlin plays it for laughs, but it's making much the same point Giamatti is. There's a reason baseball carries so much nostalgia with it. As Mary McGrory said, "Baseball is what we were. Football is what we have become." If football is a metaphor for war and empire (and hardly even a metaphor anymore -- see Gregg Easterbrook's new "The King of Sports: Football's Impact on America"), then baseball can be a metaphor for life. Or as George Will might, and probably already has, put it, life is a metaphor for baseball. Either way, take time for "Take Time for Paradise." You don't have to be a philosopher to enjoy baseball (fortunately), but sometimes a little philosophy can help. ( )

In this magnificent gem of a book, Bart Giamatti argues for a classical view of sports and leisure generally. Drawing heavily from Aristotle and Shakespeare, he argues that the mark of truly free people is in how they use their freedom. 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. 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. 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. This section is somewhat more practical and less theoretical. 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. In others, such as the issues around steroids and cheating, we can only wonder how he might have handled the 90s or 2000s. 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. The baseball section of your local library or bookstore is chock-full of this kind of writing, and Giamatti's is as good as anyone else's I've read. That said, it's not particularly better, nor does it reflect his status as commissioner in any obvious way. Perfectly nice to read, though, and a dense volume like this probably does need a lighter ending. ( )

Giamatti certainly had a high love of baseball, and of sport in general, as you can see by this treatise. It comes across clearly, even through the more formally written, philosophical prose. He situates it within the ideas of what the purpose of life is, what we really should seek to do, and the amount of freedom we can get, the way that freedom and enjoyment can be enhanced by a set of rules to work with it in, and connecting that with American ideals. Overall, yes, this is well-written and thought provoking sports philosophy.

That said, man, it's slim... and if I didn't know that it actually was completed and out for publication before Giamatti died, I would have figured it for an incomplete posthumous publication. I don't think I really got a summation of his arguments, as I often expect from academic pieces of this length, and it's quite svelte for a non-academic book, indeed. I did enjoy it, and you can try to imagine what else he might have had to say had he left longer, but I can't see this as much but a library read, if you run into it. ( )

Before his death, A. Bartlett Giamatti was a Yale University professor and Major League Baseball commissioner. In Take Time for Paradise, he philosophizes on the importance of leisure and sports - specifically baseball - in American life.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book to the average baseball fan. It takes that special type of fan that doesn't just enjoy watching the game, but enjoys talking about it, for lack of a better word, deeply. I kind of expected this to be more about the game of baseball, maybe with some history thrown in. In fact, it's more of a philosophy book, taking the argument that sports are transformative and more important than "just a game," then spending the last third discussing baseball specifically. I found some of his points interesting to think about: Giamatti's thoughts leisure becoming more of an private than a public endeavor are, I think, even more true today than when the book was first published in 1989. Other times, I struggled to understand what he was saying or thought he was reading too much into things - but then, my favorite sport is football, so maybe if he was talking about that I would have found more to agree with. ( )

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review through Library Thing's Early Reviewer program. This review is written by my husband, on whose behalf I requested the book.)

Ingrained in my memory of my youth, is the summer of 1989. Just a few days before I entered high school, Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader was banished by baseball for gambling. The baseball commissioner, A. Bartlett Giamatti was suddenly someone famous to me. He, the outsider intellectual from Harvard, had done what was once thought impossible. Giamatti had kicked out, rightfully so, Pete Rose. Just a few days later Giamatti died, replaced by a faceless old man, and my life moved on. I rarely thought about Giamatti as a baseball commissioner for many years. His time was too brief to make any other sort of impression. This was my loss.

Written years ago, but re-printed now, Take Time for Paradise explains and expands upon Giamatti’s now well documented love of the game of baseball. This book takes the reader beyond the superficial trappings of baseball and into the psyche of a baseball lover. While a simple game on the surface, once you are immersed in the spirit of the game you see the randomness, the complexities, and the humanity in the game itself.

The books is broken down into only three chapters “Self Knowledge”, “Community”, and “Baseball As a Narrative”. The book is not a long one, but the sophisticated writing and concepts meant that re-reading passages will almost be a necessity. The common theme across all the chapters is how baseball is such an American game, in both creation and spirit. This view is made without any political baggage and is not a political statement. Baseball has reflected both best and worst in America since its hazy beginnings. Giamatti does the sport and the country proud with a well written essay on America’s pastime. ( )