This commemorative book reinforces baseball's historical status as our national pastime, featuring the hopes and dreams of the fans who have continued to love baseball through the good times and bad.

Soldiers played the game when the guns were silent during the Civil War. Immigrants arriving in the U.S. at the turn of the century learned to love baseball, just as they learned to love and be a part of this country. Presidents have inaugurated new seasons of baseball for nearly a century. The game has burrowed into our collective history, connecting generations, and becoming the very essence of our national life, as poet Donald Hall wrote about in Fathers Playing Catch with Sons.

Basketball and football have challenged baseball’s supremacy over the last half-century, but while both offer immediate thrills, neither has the possibility of becoming part of American mythology in the way baseball has. Simply put, baseball fans are a breed apart. Their dedication shows why the root word of fan is, in fact, fanatic.

Baseball captivates fans because it's a game driven by statistics to be memorized and debated, a game with historical periods to dissect and players to compare, and a game where the past always sets the stage for the present. 

Baseball has always belonged to the fans: generations of kids who saw their first game as part of a knothole gang, playing in sandlots or on crowded city streets where manhole covers served as bases. These fans maintained their loyalties to teams and players in later years, holding fast to the dreams of their youth.

My Baseball Story serves as a cultural trip log, journeying through our nation’s history, showcasing fans amid their active lives thinking about baseball, what the game means to them as a whole — and what it means to them personally.

What does baseball mean to you?