Baseball as Metaphysics

"Cohen is a superfan, and he has written an intellectual manual for his co-religionists. They know who they are and they will cherish this manual. But anyone who has spent a soft, green afternoon, his shirt open at the throat to the sun, the whistles and chatter of the infield drifting up to the edge of his mind, watching, absorbing, taking in a baseball game, will cherish it."
-- From the introduction by Jim Bouton, former Major League pitcher and author of the 1970 controversial bestseller Ball Four.

Originally published in 1974 as Baseball the Beautiful: Decoding the Diamond, this new paperback edition has been completely reformatted and contains the full text of the original version. According to the bio that Marvin Cohen, now 86, wrote for his website, the original publisher took the liberty of changing the book's now restored title "for commercial feasibility and to bring in the lumbering lowbrow audience."

This new edition also contains a later essay that did not appear in the original, and the author has also written a new foreword.

About the Author
Cohen, Marvin: - Marvin Cohen is an American essayist, novelist, playwright, poet, humorist, and surrealist. He is the author of nine published books and several plays. His short fiction and essays have appeared in more than 80 publications, including The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Nation, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Fiction, The Hudson Review, Quarterly Review of Literature, Transatlantic Review, and New Directions annuals. His 1980 play The Don Juan and the Non-Don Juan was first performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival as part of the Poets at the Public Series. Staged readings of the play have featured actors Richard Dreyfuss, Keith Carradine, Wallace Shawn, Jill Eikenberry, Larry Pine, and Mimi Kennedy. Born in Brooklyn in 1931, Cohen has described himself as one who has "risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground." He studied art at Cooper Union but left college to focus on writing, supporting himself with a series of odd jobs including mink farmer and merchant seaman. He also taught creative writing at The New School, the City College of New York, C.W. Post of Long Island University, and Adelphi University. Cohen currently lives in New York City with his wife, a retired paperback editor.