Makeshift Fields

Makeshift Fields is a book that provides a snapshot of grassroots baseball in Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales. Played as it is in the rain and cold, on temporary diamonds that are sometimes less than ideal, baseball is still fragile in these places and an enormous group effort is needed to sustain it. The book is the story of people who love the game, the story of people who believe that baseball can flourish where it’s been planted, developing according to the idiosyncrasies of each location. On one hand, baseball is baseball, and what is depicted—despite some idiosyncratic rules and an incredibly wide range of talent and experience—is not dissimilar to what one might see in North America. On the other hand, it feels different. More precarious, yes, but also more communal. This is baseball played for its own sake, played in public parks by people who have somehow fallen in love with the game or are searching for a piece of home. Written in the tradition of Dave Bidini’s Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places, Makeshift Fields provides readers with a vivid picture of baseball as it is played in these places.