Why Is the Foul Pole Fair? : Or, Answers to the Baseball Questions Your Dad Hoped You Wouldn't Ask by Vince Staten

You’ve visited the hardware store with him, stocked up at the drug store with him, bought your groceries with him, and plunked down your two bits for a shave and a haircut with him. And now the inimitable Vince Staten takes you out to the ol’ ballgame, buys you some peanuts and Cracker Jack, and answers all the baseball questions your dad hoped you wouldn’t ask.

In “Why Is the Foul Pole Fair?,” Staten details the origins of everything baseball, including, for example, the average lifespan of the major-league ball (seven pitches; fewer if Mike Piazza is at the plate), the exacting standards of infield maintenance (chronicling the declaration of the “end of bad hops in our lifetime”), and the succinct, efficient nomenclature of big-league bats (Rod Carew used a C271 Louisville Slugger, so named because he was the 271st player whose last name began with a C to commission his own bat model. Simple, right?).

Blending dogged research, unaffected, self-deprecating humor, and a genuine love of everything baseball, Staten covers all the bases and explains why one of them is shaped differently than the rest while he’s at it.

And though “Why Is the Foul Pole Fair?” is, of course, about radar guns and box seats, it’s also about how a middle-aged father and an eighteen-year-old son hell-bent for college spend an easy, quietly meaningful afternoon together. Enjoying a day at the ballpark with his son, who is soon departing for school, Staten fondly illuminates how baseball has been color and context in their relationship and, by extension, how it’s been the same for everyone who thrills to the notion – or memory – of dads and kids having a twilit catch in the backyard.

Partanecdotal history of the sport’s tableau, part demystification of baseball’s tools and storied playing grounds, and part valentine to fathers and sons, as well as to the game that welcomes them both, “Why Is the Foul Pole Fair?” is chicken soup for the baseball lover’s soul.