Bunts

At the beginning of the 1990s, a political columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator set out, in his words, to write an antiromantic book about a subject that had been romanticized in print for 100 years. The subject was baseball, the columnist George Will, and the book "Men at Work." His anti-romantic love letter was warmly received by those who love baseball. Critics called it "an excellent book about excellence" (Barbara Grizzuti Harrison), "a classic [that] may even stand up as the best baseball book of the 1990s" (Jerome Holtzman), "a hit -- a triple off the center field wall" (Roger Angell), and by readers who kept it at the top of bestseller lists for more than five months. He's back. George Will returns to baseball with more than 70 finely honed pieces about the sometimes recondite, sometimes frustrating, always passionately felt National Pastime. Here are Will's eulogy for the late Curt Flood ("Dred Scott in Spikes"), Will on Ted Williams ("When Ted Williams retired in 1960, a sportswriter said that Boston knew how Britain felt when it lost India. Indeed. Britain felt diminished, but also a bit relieved"), and on his own baseball career ("I was a very late draft choice of the Mittendorf Funeral Home Panthers. Our color was black"). Here are subjects ranging from the author's 1977 purchase of a single share of stock in the Chicago Cubs, a purchase brokered by Warren Buffett ("a St. Louis Cardinal fan, but not otherwise sinister"), to the collision between Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti, to the building of Camden Yards in Baltimore, to the dismantling of the 1997 World Series Champion Florida Marlins. With new material, including an essay on the art of baseballbroadcasting, featuring ESPN play-by-play man Jon Miller, and incorporating more than 70 photos, "Bunts" is certain to be for 1998 what "Men at Work" was for 1990 -- "inquisitive and extraordinarily nimble-minded ... this season's baseball book of choice" ( "The Wall Street Journal" ).