Critics often say that baseball is too slow. Admittedly, there are stretches of inaction that lull even the most gimlet-eyed fans into inattentiveness or induce them to wax nostalgic. But then there'll be an explosion of blink-and-you-miss-it action, often in multiple parts of the stadium simultaneously—which explains why baseball is also the most photogenic of all team sports.
Neil Leifer's Ballet in the Dirt: The Golden Age of Baseball—a lush Taschen edition priced at $400 with a limited run of 1,000 copies—collects the celebrated Sports Illustrated and Time photographer's best diamond images from the sixties and seventies. It has its share of infielders frozen in midair pirouettes, bone-jarring collisions at home plate (such as the Orioles' catcher Andy Etchebarren getting plowed during the 1970 World Series against the Reds), sluggers (like Reggie Jackson) pretzel-twisted after missing a pitch, and runners making wild, gnomic gestures as they argue a call. But Leifer was also masterful at illustrating a stadium's atmosphere and capturing the thousand-yard stares that made stars like Koufax, Clemente, and Aaron seem even more heroic.
See a slideshow of photographs from Neil Leifer's bookWas it, as the book's subtitle claims, a golden age? Who knows? But the game captured in this book does feel somehow premodern, with its retro-techno scoreboards, umps in jackets and ties, and players who don't look monstrously muscled up. Some, like many of the three-time champion Oakland A's, even sport walrus-like mustaches. In our current age of Oakley shades, droopy pants, steroid-pumped stats, and surly home-run kings, perhaps Ballet in the Dirt proves that some things are worth being nostalgic for after all.
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