The Chrysanthemum and the Bat review

Digitized by Jessica Suchman and Catherine Nissley.

Japanese baseball, even more than its American counterpart, is a game of custom and tradition, a sport which has acquired staggering appeal. Children play baseball 12 months a year; major league players are treated with deference reserved for royalty and clergymen. Whiting touches upon these topics in this definitive work on Japanese baseball, and he dwells at length on virtually every aspect of major league ball imaginable –playing caliber, front office wrangling, public relations, Japanese televising ventures. For baseball buffs, this is a detailed, authoritative book; for more casual observers, however, the minutiae tends to overwhelm. The prose style, while lucid, seldom verges on incisive; and the book gets a bit tedious. Baseball fans will overlook these faults; for them, the abundance of facts is the book's saving grace.