Steve Rushin's "The 34-Ton Bat"

The subtitle of The 34-Ton Bat is the equivalent of an 18-inning ball game: The Story of Baseball as Told Through Bobbleheads, Cracker Jacks, Jock Straps, Eye Black & 375 Other Strange & Unforgettable Objects.
Don't let that exhausting parcel of language deter you. The 34-Ton Bat is a book to be relished, a perfect companion for the lulls in October baseball.
Rushin, a veteran writer for Sports Illustrated, has managed to take ordinary objects -- including stadium seats, urinals, and flannel uniforms -- and explain their roles in the sport's rich tapestry.
Yes, urinals, those impersonal troughs where men used to line up next to each other to relieve themselves after quaffing a few (or more) beers. In the chapter The Decrepit Urinals of Ebbets Field Rushin traces the evolution of stadia bathrooms and also explains why the price of beer has skyrocketed over the last 40 years. The eight dollar beer, Rushin surmises, "as a barrier-to-entry of ballpark inebriation, has proved beneficial to the modern fan, though few have thanked the owners for it." (It's hard to believe that in 1974 one could buy a cup of Stroh's at Cleveland Stadium of 60 cents. Yes, 60 cents.) Inside the stadiums, the atmosphere is unquestionably safer; Rushin documents  many instances in the early 1900s when players were pelted with glass bottles from both beer and sodas. Notably Frank Chance -- he of Tinkers to Evers to Chance fame -- had cartilage in his neck severed at the Polo Grounds in 1908 from an errant pop bottle. But one does wonder if the spike in beer prices has contributed to an increase in tailgating and some of the ugly incidents outside stadiums that seem to be occurring with more frequency.
The Pirates are prominently featured in The 34-Ton Bat. Rushin thinks that five world championships aside, the Pirates' greatest contributions to the game have been "sartorial."  Fred Clarke, manager of the team from 1900-1915, invented the flip shades that allowed players to shield their eyes from the sun and later became a fashion statement in the '60s and '70s. He praises the pillbox caps of the Pirates' great teams in the late '70s, and shortstop Ronny Cedeno's use of eye black to create the illusion of a moustache during a game in 2010.
The Pirates were also the first team to make using batting helmets mandatory for players in 1953, although general manager Branch Rickey did have an ulterior motive: He owned the American Baseball Cap, Inc., which manufactured those first "industrial quality" helmets that featured a "halo of holes" on the crowns for ventilation.
Less successful was the Pirates' attempt to color the foul lines in the early 1970s, following the Oakland A's petition to used multi-colored bases. Both appeals, thankfully, were denied.
The book slightly loses focus in The Beanproof Cap of Foulproof Taylor chapter, the stories about the development of batting helmets, protective cups and jock straps tending to meander. But for most of the book, Rushin pulls off an amazing feat: He makes a reader care about the seemingly ordinary conventions of the sport, and does so with wit and verve.