Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: You do have to like baseball to appreciate fully Chad Harbach's début novel. Yes, it's about other things, but the focus is on baseball and how one's talent for the game, or lack thereof, affects one's sense of self-worth. Non-baseball fans would probably relate to many of the themes, but I doubt they'd give the book its due if they had to force their way through long set pieces about missed cut-off men and errant throws and hitting to the opposite field. It helps to like the game, as I do. But this is still a fine novel, if not exactly the Great American Novel some would have you believe. Maybe the book's most vocal champions like the game too much.