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A book that somehow passed under my radar in 2009 is Talmage Boston's Baseball and the Baby Boomer: A History, Commentary, and Memoir.

Boston -- a trial lawyer, baseball historian and Boomer -- profiles the players (and one commissioner) who became his heroes and reinforced his love of the sport, and the special relationship between baseball and the generation born between 1946 and 1964 of which I am part.

I exchanged e-mails with Mr. Boston a few days before the new year on the popularity of the game, Nolan Ryan's time as a Met, the poetics of Bart Giamatti and more.

SNY: What made you want to write this book?

Talmage Boston: The desire to bring new light to shine on those baseball characters of my lifetime who are forever embedded in my "hard drive"-- Mickey Mantle, Jimmy Piersall and their impossibly hard-nosed dads; Carl Yastrzemski, the Impossible Dream and Red Sox Mania; Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey and the Noble Experiment, Nolan Ryan as the ultimate Baby Boomer symbol of the game, Bart Giamatti and the eloquence he brought to baseball's mindset and Roger Maris and his dramatic and underappreciated career.

SNY: Do you think the game of baseball is less of a "generational glue" than it was in the 1950s-1960s?

TB: Yes. Fathers and sons now have so many more ways to bond than they did in prior generations. These days, more fathers and sons bond playing video games together than they do playing catch.

SNY: How would you describe each generation's relationship to baseball in the 20th century?

TB: I suspect the generations that preceded Baby Boomers thought more about baseball than any other sports, and those that followed the Baby Boomers think less about baseball than they do about football and basketball.

SNY: What are some of the reasons you believe baseball has lost its emotional hold on the country?

TB: One main reason is it doesn't televise as well as football or basketball. It also lost its hold because of the decline of the American family, and the increasing disconnect between fathers and sons because of higher divorce rates, and because everyone spends too much time watching television and living on the Internet.

SNY: What do you think Major League Baseball should do in order to regain its status as the national pastime?

TB: MLB needs to make sure it doesn't price itself out of the market, since it is still by far the best family value around compared to the NFL and the NBA. It also needs to find ways to speed up the game.

SNY: In New York City, baseball is discussed 24-7-365, on radio and television, in newspapers and blogs. Why do you think the sport has such a strong hold on the Northeast?

TB: I'm not sure. Obviously, there is a ton of baseball history in both New York and Boston that people savor, and it far exceeds the game's history in other parts of the country (with the possible exceptions of Chicago and St. Louis). Also, the newspapers in New York and Boston have always attracted top writers to cover their home teams' games, which enhances the game's impact on an area's people. 



SNY: Is the game of baseball a better metaphor for life than the other sports?

TB: I think it's the best sports metaphor -- the desire to "go home"; the intense concentrated dramatic action in the midst of extended periods of non-action; the pressure on the individual to perform his job well in a situation where mistakes and failures are readily apparent and can't be covered up in the midst of team play; the absolute meritocracy of the game -- to name just a few of the way the game imitates life.

SNY: How did Bart Giamatti impact you?

TB: I lacked the capacity to connect the dots as to why baseball meant so much to me. Giamatti, with his eloquence, succeeded in connecting the dots by describing it in words I could understand and that absolutely resonated with me as being totally accurate. He put into words what no one had ever put into words before. In the subtitle to the chapter, I call him "Baseball's Lyricist" -- you and I and all serious baseball fans always had the capacity to hear the music of the game on the field -- it was Giamatti that expressed the words that fit the music -- and made baseball a song we all could sing. If you read the many things that Giamatti said about baseball and its place in the American consciousness, you won't have to spend too many more hours figuring out why you find yourself so connected to it.

SNY: Old-time Mets fans remember and rue the day Nolan Ryan was traded to the Angels. You write in your book of pitching coach Rube Walker and manager Gil Hodges' role in not developing Ryan into more of a pitcher. The story that we fans heard was that Ryan, because he was from a small town in Texas, was not happy in the big city.

TB: He wasn't happy in New York because he never found a definite spot in the Mets rotation in large part because of his National Guard service, and also because no one coached him at all to develop his pitching repertoire, the way the Angels' pitching coach Tom Morgan did once he got to Los Angeles.

SNY: When the Mets honored their 1969 world championship team in 2009, it was the first time Ryan was able to attend a Mets-sponsored event in all the years since his departure.

TB: He speaks often of the joy on playing on a world championship team and how he wishes it had happened more than once in his 27-year career.

SNY: Compared to when you were a kid growing up, does knowing the politics, money, drugs, the big business and corporate aspect of baseball tarnish the game for you in anyway?

TB: No, because I won't let anything tarnish it for me. It's still and will always be a great game that has many metaphorical connections to life itself, and gets played on Bart Giamatti's "green field in the sun." The stories of the people involved in it I still find engaging.