"If you were much of a boy growing up in the Maspeth section of Queens
in the late 1930s and 1940s, you had the baseball fever. It seemed
contagious, but it struck mostly from within. . . . Often, in later
years, when I was writing a long series of books on the game, some
well-intended philistine would ask to have explained to him the
fascination with baseball. I offered my stock answer: 'If you have to
ask the question, you'll never understand the answer.'" With this small
confession Donald Honig begins his charming memoir of a life devoted to
the charms of baseball, including the many great figures of the game he
has known in the past half-century.