{"product_id":"coffee-table-book-of-baseball-hardcover","title":"Coffee Table Book of: Baseball (Hardcover)","description":"\u003cp\u003eCoffee Table Book of: Baseball is a large format book of baseball, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: the stitched ball, the glove and the bat, chalk lines, bases and the mound, small town fields standing empty from first light to night, the old games the sport grew from, and a few players seen far off in plain dark clothing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe kit is laid out plain: a new ball with its curving red seam, its white leather seen close with a row of red stitches, a ball sawn in half to show its cork core and yarn, a glove tied shut round a ball to break it in, an open glove with its laced web, a thick round mitt, an old wire mask, a chest protector and shin guards on pegs, spiked shoes, a rosin bag on the mound, a bat dark with pine tar at the handle, a silver aluminium bat and a long thin bat at the dugout steps.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe making follows a tall ash tree in a summer meadow, round billets stacked to dry, a bat fresh from the lathe among pale shavings, a rack of new bats still unfinished and two pieces of white leather beside a spool of red thread.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe past runs from a milking stool on a village green, a rounders bat by its post, a straw bonnet beside an old ball, a wooden stake in a meadow and a white meeting house across a common, to a flannel shirt and straw hat on pegs, a bat and ball on a bluff above a river, an army tent with a bat at its pole, an old lemon peel ball, a thin fingerless glove, old bats of odd shapes in a barrel and a long heavy bat worn smooth.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShort notes run through the book, on the rules and how the game is played, the ball, bat and glove and how they are made and cared for, and the history of the game and its words: in stoolball, a very old game, the batter defended a stool; it is often named as an ancestor of baseball, a town bylaw of 1791 forbade baseball within eighty yards of its new meeting house, to save the windows, the bases are white canvas bags set 90 feet apart, and a runner must touch each one in turn, and bleachers, the cheap open seats, are said to take their name from boards bleached by the sun.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrinted in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cedar Pine Editions","offers":[{"title":"Case Bound - PPC","offer_id":68202008150320,"sku":"9671456008141","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk\/products\/coffee-table-book-of-baseball-hardcover","provider":"The Great British Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}