COMPUTER COACH.

By Stephen R.Lewinstein '63. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1971. 136 pp. $4.50.

This is an exceptionally well written story of a boy, a baseball team, and a computer. As a story, it is full of surprises and tension. The swift-moving narrative holds the reader's interest because, between a dramatic opening and an exciting finish, the story goes somewhere. Exactly where it goes provides us with insights into two of life's more complex phenomena: baseball and computers.

As for baseball, the writer obviously knows the game intimately, both from a technical and from an emotional point of view. A reader watches the game from a viewing platform, which turns out to be unique: the mind of the manager, in which every ball and every strike have a meaning for both tactics and strategy.

As for computers, the writer knows a good deal about them also, and the insights provided, although very different in kind, are equally arresting. The computer is neither villain nor hero; rather it is an instrument of assistance, terribly precise when programmed with the right information, diviner of statistical-numerical norms and deviations, containing at least the glimmer of prediction within certain parameters, which allow a human actor to render the final decision.

Finally, as a general discourse on the relationships between individual ability and group cooperation so crucial to many kinds of athletics, the book indirectly contributes a commentary of its own. If I had a twelveyear-old, I should definitely place it in his hands.

A member of the Department of History,State University of New York, Brockport,Mr. Bucholz has minor interests in baseballand computers.