Raymond A. Belliotti

It may seem bizarre to put Ted Williams in the same sentence with Albert Camus, or Mickey Mantle with St. Thomas Aquinas, but Raymond Angelo Belliotti, author of Watching Baseball, Seeing Philosophy: The Great Thinkers at Play on the Diamond (McFarland), makes some compelling connections. He matches nine players with a “philosopher-teammate” and explains why the two are compatible. These may seem a stretch at first, as he discusses each athlete in terms of the great thinkers’ teachings, but the patient reader will be rewarded. The most intriguing chapter links Jose Canseco with Immanuel Kant in a fascinating “dialogue” between those who advocate the use of steroids and those who see them as providing a detriment to fair play and sportsmanship.… (altro)