Despite the worst title in the history of baseball books, The Utility of Boredom by Canadian Andrew Forbes is a delightful collection of 25 baseball essays. Short (six or seven pages at most) and highly personal (as essays should be), these brief ruminations are often lyrical, as well. They display both deep familiarity with and affection for various aspects of baseball. Whether the overt subjects are rain delays (“Lost in the Fog”) and disbanded teams (“Defunct”) or profiles (“The D-Train at Rest”) and a botched World Series call (“Tagged”), the underlying subject is usually the ways baseball affects its fans; and Forbes is invariably able to make these effects seem palpable and important. [The Utility of Boredom] will yield numerous moments of quiet satisfaction to readers willing to give it the close attention it deserves.

— Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine