Life, poetry and baseball | Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Baseball, more than any other sport, has been analyzed to death, and the piece argues that writers from Roger Angell and Jane Leavy to Tom Boswell have used the game to probe larger questions of life. It traces how poets such as Donald Hall, named Poet Laureate in 2006, approached baseball by translating its drama into verse and by joining spring training with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Hall’s work with the Pirates produced portraits of figures like Dock Ellis and his homegrown cure for racism, illustrating how literature can illuminate sports culture. The essay also nods to W.P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe, whose fiction helped fuse baseball myth with national identity.