By Emily Meloche
Thirty baseball games in 30 ballparks, in 30 days. Sounds like an impossible challenge.
But baseball stat nerd and recent graduate Ben Blatt wrote an algorithm. Though it would involve several cross-country drives, a day of back-to-back games in Chicago’s two ballparks, and an insane dedication to America’s national pastime, it was possible. So Ben talked his friend and fellow Harvard Lampoon writer Eric Brewster into joining him on the crazy month-long baseball pilgrimage to every ballpark in the MLB.
“I Don’t Care if We Never Get Back” is their chronicle of the journey.
Split into short chapters (one for each visited stadium), the book reads like a road trip, but one where you get through a 16-hour drive in two minutes.
Ben and Eric make rather odd traveling companions, especially due to the fact that Eric doesn’t particularly like baseball. The constant vacillation in their tolerance of each other and the mission keep the book feeling fresh, even though the pattern stays the same (watch a baseball game, get in the car, watch another baseball game.)
Of course, it’s not that easy.
A complicated algorithm-derived schedule combined with Ben’s very strict rules that they must be present for the entire game—first pitch to final out—means there’s a lot of “will they make it?” tension throughout. And, no, I won’t tell you if they do or not.
Fast paced and funny, I Don’t Care if We Never Get Back is the ideal summer read.
Just don’t be surprised if you have an itch to watch some baseball when you’ve finished it.
