A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

There's nothing bad that accrues from baseball.

I'm not going to sit here now and say 'do this,' or 'do that.' But you must - must - expunge any vestige of racism.

For me, baseball is the most nourishing game outside of literature. They both are re-tellings of human experience.

Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.

On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way.