Fred Stein 's A History of the Baseball Fan begins by describing the fan as “the least publicized or recognized figure in baseball.” Stein's next sentence, however, is an unintentional capitulation: “Baseball essentially is about the player … ” Here we will ask: Is it?

The proposition that baseball is essentially about spectatorship, not participation, would seem to present merely a philosophical question in a particular world that revels only in the instance. Keith Hernandez, one of the game's most cerebral players, is for example entirely uninterested in philosophical or abstract thought in any form. Contemplation – “thinking” is the favored term – is deemed by Hernandez a matter of conclusions derived from details. “I can't think about baseball other than in … specifics,” Hernandez writes in the preamble to Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan. A moment-by-moment analysis of every move and motion made in two games played in June, 1993, Hernandez's book never once breaks out of the particular. Rarely has the term “pure” been used so completely to mean focused – untainted by rather than made lucid by theory. Hernandez will give us several pages about guessing a pitch on a favorable hitter's count, only, seemingly in the midst of writing the scene, to recall that his narrative is supposed to be for the fan. He had been addressing and instructing the batter (try such a guess late in a game, do not attempt this gambit too often, etc.), but then pulls up to urge: “So, as a fan, don't hold your breath waiting to see this trick.” Though admirable, Hernandez’s book is not about the fan, nor “for” the fan. The former player’s strength is pedagogical. He narrates authentic (“pure”) not ideal participation. The baseball fan in Pure Baseball is a marketing afterthought.