Nine Innings gives you exactly what it says on the label: A description, in minute detail, of a single baseball game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Baltimore Orioles. Daniel Okrent follows the action, pitch-by-pitch and out-by-out, through nine chapters: one for each inning. The result is a narrative far more richly textured than any sports-section write-up or broadcast play-by-play – more richly textured, perhaps, than any ever published in book form. Okrent is not content, however, to just narrate the action. At (seemingly) every opportunity he pulls back from a particular event on the field to add background and context. A pitcher’s choice of a slider becomes the occasion for a brief gloss on the pitch’s history and dynamics. Paul Molitor’s first at-bat is accompanied by a tour through the five positions he played for the Brewers in the space of two seasons, before settling at second base. Milwaukee owner (and later baseball commissioner) Bud Selig and Baltimore manager Earl Weaver, whose decisions set the stage for much of what happens on the field, loom large, but even equipment managers and absent players (Cecil Cooper of the Brewers, sidelined by injury) get their moments.

Okrent’s concept is fascinating: Reveal the full extent to which even a “routine” and “ordinary” ball game is complex, and rooted in the history of the series, the season, prior seasons, and the larger history of baseball. There have been in-depth studies of particular seasons (Cait Murphy’s Crazy ‘08) and series (Buzz Bissinger’s Three Nights in August , and minute studies of the subtleties of the game (George Will’s Men at Work), but there is, to the best of my knowledge, nothing else like Nine Innnings in the vast literature of baseball. That Okrent has filled that gap is, all by itself, praiseworthy.

The fact that the book is unique means, however, that it’s hard to gauge whether any given reader is going to like it . . . or want to read the entire thing. There’s no way to say, reliably, “If you liked X, you’ll like Nine Innings because there’s no title that could be substituted for X. I’ve read more than my share of tightly focused baseball books . . . but ran out of steam somewhere in the fourth inning of this one, even as I admired Okrent’s research and narrative craftsmanship.

Make no mistake: This “inside baseball” at its most inside. There’s no structure beyond that imposed by the rhythms of the game itself, no central character (like Tony LaRussa in Three Nights in August, and no dramatic climax (like the pennant-deciding Red Sox-Yankees playoff game in David Halberstam’s The Summer of ‘49) to which the narrative builds. Truly loving (and, likely finishing) this book requires relishing the details for their own sake. Even if your thirst for inside baseball has limits, however, Nine Innings is worth dipping into, at least for a few at-bats. ( )

I came to Brewers fandom in the late 1980s, thus missing the total importance of the 1982 season to the older fans. I really wish I had found out about the existence of this book before 2008. It really helped me understand a lot of things about the organization that appear to persist to this day, despite the team being under different ownership and the front office completely turning over. (Well, Yost and Simmons persisted until 9/15/08--finding out about them in 1982 also explains some things about 2008.)

Inpsired idea. A Lot of name-dropping. ( )