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BBC Radio 4 - On Baseball

Michael Sandel talks baseball, national identity and the role of team sport in life.

Michael Sandel and guests talk about the differences between baseball and cricket, how the games relate to national identity and the role of team sport in life.

In London earlier this summer the New York Yankees played the Boston Red Sox in the first competitive baseball games ever to take place in Europe. 

Professor Michael Sandel - a life-long Red Sox fan who is perhaps better known to Radio 4 listeners as the Public Philosopher - went to the games and invited some guests to watch the action with him.

Michael and his guests discuss the differences between baseball and cricket, how the games relate to national identity, the role of sport in life and why baseball's history is America's history.

Michael met: Ed Smith, England's chief national cricket selector whose book Playing Hard Ball compares American baseball to cricket; Ed Miliband, the former Labour party leader who developed a passion for baseball while living in the US as a child; and Claire Smith, ESPN's Major League Baseball analyst and sportswriter. She was the first women to receive the Baseball Writers’ Association of America's highest award. 

Producer: Ben Carter

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