Many background aspects of The Boy Who Saved Baseball are based upon past glories. The community of Dillontown came into being due to a gold strike that, 100 years before, created a vibrant, thriving population. Over the course of the 10 decades that followed, the town lost its gold rush, 90% of its population, and any real hope of a future resembling the splendor of its history. As cruelly pointed out by the financier Alabaster Jones, the town is on its way to oblivion. Representative of many small towns whose heyday is in the distant past, there are fewer customers to support the few small businesses that remain, and the pool of professionals who serve the citizens dwindles. Once the community caregiver, Doc is 87 with eyes so bad he cannot read the box scores on the sports page; Graydog, the lawyer, only works part-time, relying on his wife’s business to support the family. Since a well-equipped education is only a bus ride away, the schools—and the jobs of Tom’s parents—also feel the threat of elimination.

Symbolic of the decline of the little town, baseball falters as well, both in the text and in the world of professional sports. Once “America’s pastime,” by the 2003 publication of this book, the game’s luster had faded, tarnished by disputes between owners and players, teams jockeying for richer markets, and the apparent loss of team loyalty resulting from free agent players chasing huge salaries.