Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.

Sports is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things - courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship.

Baseball's best teams lose about sixty-five times a season. It is not a game you can play with your teeth clenched.

Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.

Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.

In a nation committed to better living through chemistry - where Viagra-enabled men pursue silicone-contoured women - the national pastime has a problem of illicit chemical enhancement. Steroids threaten the health of the 5 percent to 7 percent of players proved, by a mild regime of scheduled tests, to be using them. Steroids also endanger emulative young people. Further, steroids subvert what baseball is selling - fair competition. And they strike at the pleasure of engagement with America's team sport with the longest history.

The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron.