Utility of Boredom

Andrew Forbes is the author of three collections of baseball writing—The Utility of Boredom (2016), The Only Way Is the Steady Way (2021), and Field Work (2025)—as well as two collections of short fiction, the novella McCurdle’s Arm, and a novel, The Diapause. He is an active member of the Society for American Baseball Research, having participated in several investigative projects. He has written for publications including the Toronto Star, Canadian Notes and Queries, and Maisonneuve Magazine, and his work has been nominated for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Trillium Book Award. Originally from Ottawa, Forbes has lived in Atlantic Canada and rural Eastern Ontario, and now resides in Peterborough, Ontario. For more information, visit andrewgforbes.com.

“Sportswriter Roger Angell called baseball a way to defeat time. So grab a beer. Sit on a porch. Put your feet up. Listen to a ball game on the radio. Or read The Utility of Boredom cover to cover. As Andrew Forbes says, “Boredom is fertile.” Rest assured, The Utility of Boredom is far from boring. It’s a book to savour, like summer.”—Trout In Plaid“In all of these essays, Forbes’s writing is almost invisibly stunning, clear, with romantic flourishes equal to his subject matter. But what he’s really able to articulate is how a love of baseball is really about a love of, or at least an acceptance of, the fact that losing is part of the game.”—National Post“Taking his cues from Susan Sarandon’s character in Bull Durham, who worships at ‘the Church of Baseball,’ secular humanist Forbes finds something close to religion in everything from Jose Bautista’s bat flip to the Billy Ripken error card.”—Quill & Quire“The Utility of Boredom isn’t just for jocks. Forbes writes lovingly and philosophically about the culture of baseball.”—Electric City“Part memoir, part philosophical thought, and really smartly written.”—Ian Letourneau, CBC Radio Fredericton“Collections of short stories are usually a mixed bag at best — not this one — I loved each story and many of them will be loved by all baseball fans.”—The Guy Who Reviews Sports Books“Forbes’ new collection of essays … is a modern poetics of baseball.”—Largehearted Boy“Forbes’ style is casual, anecdotal, written with a wide knowledge and deep passion for the game yet readable on different levels, depending where you are on the baseball knowledge continuum. For neophyte me, it was all pleasure of discovery and details that will forever stick.”—Matilda Magtree“The Utility of Boredom by Canadian Andrew Forbes is a delightful collection of 25 baseball essays.”—Spitball Magazine“Baseball, like life, is getting flattened out these days, compressed to noisy highlight clips and shrill pontification. This book cures that flattening, reaching with grace and poetry past all the bludgeoning hot takes and arid statistical analyses to the kinds of absurd and beautiful details—a spectacular throw from deep right; a meandering spring training game; a foul grounder bounding up into the stands, right at you—that first made us all fall in love with the sport. If baseball, like heaven, is a mansion with many rooms, the essays in The Utility of Boredom are like a fat set of janitor’s keys unlocking the wide open marvels of the game.”–Josh Wilker, Cardboard Gods and Benchwarmer: A Sports-Obsessed Memoir of Fatherhood“Baseball is a welcome obsession of mine, a comfort. Reading Utility of Boredom by Andrew Forbes fed that obsession beautifully, warmly. It glows. He writes of baseball as sanctuary, baseball in both general terms and specifics—from the feeling of walking into a ballpark on a summer day to Vin Scully’s perfect description of a cloud. He invites us to get on our tiptoes and peek over the fence, smell the grass, hear the crack of the bat. He respects the slow-glory of the game, he loves the game, he’s really good at this, and I absolutely trust him with my baseball-heart.”—Leesa Cross-Smith, Every Kiss A War

• IntroductionSanctuary The Utility of Boredom The 163 Games of José Oquendo The Ballparks of America Get Me Over Jim Eisenreich’s Eyes The Best That I Could Do Lost in the Fog Madison Bumgarner and the Beautiful Lie Joy in Abeyance and the Stubborn Persistence of Hope Birth of a Right Fielder Everything Is Beautiful and Nothing Makes Sense Ichiro The Grandstand The D-train at Rest The Green Light Defunct Marco Scutaro Hits a Foul Ball Prospects Odds Against: The Ballad of Ricky Romero King Felix’s Changeup Tagged Home Reviving Summer 162