Amusement at another's expense

Amusing critical view of Michael Chabon's young adult book about baseball Summerland:

Everything that makes a bad baseball book bad is here–lyricism laid on with a trowel, the “mythology” of baseball and its deep meaning, aching fancy in place of hard exactness. Supposedly a Young Adult novel. Give it to your son only if you want him to hate the sport forever. “A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day,” Chabon writes. No, it isn’t, any more than cream cheese is a ready smooth device for measuring the contours of a bagel.

from a consideration of best and worst baseball novels: http://www.hardballcooperative.com/?p=1044