BASEBALL TIME

A glance at the subject index of Samuel L. Macey's (1991) recent Time: A Bibliographic Guide reveals not a single entry under the heading of either 'baseball' or even 'sport'. This is not, however, an omission but a symptom: with the possible exception of Allen Guttmann (1978) in From Ritual to Record, no sports historian or theorist has, to my kno wledge, done more than note baseball's unique temporalities. 'Baseball Time' attempts, then, to explore in brief such temporal aspects of th e game (in literature and on the field) as its privileging of event ti me over clock time, its marked variations in tempo and its ability to all but escape temporality itself.