Description: In this fresh linkage between two forms of powerful play, Samuel Crowl interweaves an exploration of Shakespeare and baseball with his own experience as a Shakespeare professor for almost fifty years and his even longer experience as a fan of the Detroit Tigers.
Review Quotes: Baseball and Shakespeare continually have a 'generational problem, ' and what Samuel Crowl sets out to do is remind us of the parallel pleasures of both. Shakespeare and Baseball succeeds not only as a completely original work about our national sport and the plays of Shakespere but also as an endearing story of a family's love affair with baseball and the Detroit Tigers.', Ralph Cohen, Gonder Professor of Shakespeare at Mary Baldwin College and Cofounder of the American Shakespeare Center 'If baseball had been invented earlier, William Shakespeare would have been the greatest baseball writer of all time and Samuel Crowl would have become a professor of baseball. Crowl's memoir of his life's passions is a grand slam.', Tony Grossi, author, commentator, and sports analyst 'In Shakespeare and Baseball, Samuel Crowl regales the reader with the pleasures of play and the glories of the game from the ballpark to the playhouse. Reading this book is an almost kinetic experience, moving seamlessly between exquisitely detailed accounts of Detroit Tigers games, classic Shakespeare performances, travelogue, family history, and memoir. With an easygoing narrative voice, Crowl draws the reader into the story of a midwestern kid chasing baseball's field of dreams to coming-of-age as a scholar and founder of a new academic field: the study of Shakespeare on film. Shakespeare and Baseball is a poignant, intellectually rewarding, and inspired chronicle of a life fueled by love and the shared wonders of the Bard and America's game.', Courtney Lehmann, Tully Knoles Professor of the Humanities at the University of the Pacific