Preface -- The infinite game -- Do we need to speed up baseball? -- In praise of being bored -- Three cheers for instant replay -- The problem with baseball on tv -- Joint attention -- The forensic sport -- No hitters, perfect games, and the meaning of life -- Keeping score -- The numbers game -- Baseball and the nature of language -- Linguistic universals -- The communication game -- A moment misunderstood -- Nobody's perfect -- "The positive role of medicine in our game's growth" -- Making peace with our cyborg nature -- Plagiarized performance -- What can a person do? -- In defense of Barry Bonds -- Legalize it! -- How much baseball is too much? -- The athlete and the gladiator -- Heartbreak and social media -- The Matt Harvey affair -- Explaining the magic of the ball park -- For the love of the game : play ball! -- How to be a fan -- Mind over matter -- The "boys" of summer -- Baseball's great equalizer -- Beep baseball -- Baseball memories

"...philosopher and baseball fan Alva Noë explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score: a score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation. Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths."--Dust jacket flap