I Don't Care If We Never Get Back - by Ben Blatt & Eric Brewster (Paperback)

About the Book

"Ben, a sports analytics wizard, loves baseball. Eric, his best friend, hates it. But when Ben writes an algorithm for the optimal baseball road trip, an impossible dream of every pitch of 30 games in 30 stadiums in 30 days, who will he call on to take shifts behind the wheel, especially when those shifts will include nineteen hours straight from Phoenix to Kansas City? Eric, of course. Will Eric regret it? Most definitely."--Book jacket.

Book Synopsis

Ben, a sports analytics wizard, loves baseball. Eric, his best friend, hates it. But when Ben writes an algorithm for the optimal baseball road trip--an impossible dream of seeing every pitch of 30 games in 30 stadiums in 30 days--who will he call on to take shifts behind the wheel, especially when those shifts include nineteen hours straight from Phoenix to Kansas City? Eric, of course. Will Eric regret it? Most definitely.

On June 1, 2013, Ben and Eric set out to see America through the bleachers and concession stands of America's favorite pastime. Along the way, human error and Mother Nature throw their mathematically optimized schedule a few curveballs. A mix-up in Denver turns a planned day off in Las Vegas into a twenty-hour drive, and a summer storm of biblical proportions threatens to make the whole thing logistically impossible, if they don't kill each other first. I Don't Care If We Never Get Back is a charming, insightful, and hilarious book about the limits of fandom and the limitlessness of friendship.

Review Quotes

"A fun ride that evokes the spirit of sports stunt journalist George Plimpton and the dazed road-trip fever of Hunter S. Thompson, minus the mind altering substances. . . . It's great watching Blatt and Brewster race home."--Boston Globe

"A cross between The Cannonball Run and The Great Race, with portions of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World thrown in for good measure. . . . The road trip--and narrative--zigzags across the country, with the authors (helped by three other drivers at times) driving 22,000 miles in 716 hours. They watched 8,913 pitches and completed their quest with a few hours to spare. . . . The dynamic and back-and-forth tension and sarcasm between Blatt and Brewster is funny. . . . Worth reading."--Tampa Tribune

"An ambitious attempt to see every pitch of 30 games in 30 stadiums in 30 days . . . [Blatt and Brewster] humorously encounter more problems than just Brewster's disdain for baseball."--Chicago Tribune

"An oblique view of baseball full of hijinks, havoc, and humor, this is fandom to the extreme."--Daily Beast

"Consistently engaging. . . . [A] fast-moving and hysterical road trip book . . . written in a style that will fondly recall the gonzo fiction of Hunter S. Thompson, as well as the great Jack Kerouac. . . . If you love baseball, you will thoroughly relish I Don't Care if We Never Get Back and most likely will finish it in one sitting. But even if you are not a fan, you still will be able to sink your teeth into the non-stop witty banter that hits a bullseye in its description of life in America and the ever-present baseball obsession. . . . This is a unique saga that will please everyone who jumps in the backseat to ride along."--Bookreporter

"If Catfish Hunter and Hunter Thompson mated, their grandkids would be Ben and Eric, whose gonzo baseball road trip glows with humor, insight and the Service Engine light of their Toyota RAV4."--Steve Rushin, author of The 34-Ton Bat

"An honest and hilarious look at what it's really like to drive across America for baseball, I Don't Care if We Never Get Back is a highlight reel of triumphs and mishaps."--Zack Hample, author of Watching Baseball Smarter

"This is a wonderfully crazy, wonderfully stupid idea. I'm glad someone--someone other than me--did it. The result is hilarious and amazing."--Steve Hely, author of How I Became a Famous Novelist and The Ridiculous Race

"The road-trip memoir has become so tired that there's almost no premise good enough to resurrect it from endless clichéeacute;, and a frenetic race to an arbitrary goal didn't seem promising. But that wasn't accounting for two things: Moneyball-worthy mathematical algorithms and the sharp, hilarious prose that has made Lampoon alums famous for generations. . . . Nate Silver numbers and James Thurber wit turn what should be a harebrained adventure into a pretty damn endearing one."--Kirkus Reviews

"[A] fun road trip/ballpark adventure with pranks, missed exits, a misadventure with a scalper, and a sellout on the worst possible day. . . . Blatt and Brewster have definitely scored."--Publishers Weekly

"Reads like a mix of Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Neil Simon and National Lampoon. You'll laugh the whole way through."--Jersey Journal

About the Author

Ben Blatt is a staff writer at Slate. A Harvard graduate, his sports analytics studies have been picked up by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Deadspin, and others.

Eric Brewster, a recent Harvard graduate, was the president of the Harvard Lampoon. He is one of the writers of The Wobbit and the New York Times bestselling The Hunger Pains: A Parody.