Chuck Hildebrand's "Hey, I Was At That Game A California Baseball Odyssey, 1965-91" is built around the scorebooks kept by the author as he explored and experienced every layer of baseball in America's most populous state - first as a young minor league fan and later as a journalist covering major league baseball during its Bay Area apex. It is a diary originally transcribed in baseball's first language, created by Henry Chadwick when he invented the baseball box score in 1859, and it is a chronology written from the same standpoint as Roger Angell's classic baseball anthologies, but seen...

Less than 13 years after baseball's most joyous marriage was consummated, it ended in 1965 with the sport's most acrimonious divorce, as a team, a city, a country and a baseball industry ripped themselves from their moorings. The Milwaukee Braves' accomplishments from 1953-59 were collectively hailed as the "Miracle of Milwaukee," and geographically and economically altered the landscape of major league baseball forever. Then the miracle became a mirage. Attendance plummeted, the team declined, and new ownership bought the franchise with the cynical and ill-concealed intent of moving it to...