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

Pettiness is the tendency of people without large purposes.

Baseball exemplifies a tension in the American mind, the constant pull between our atomistic individualism and our yearning for community.

[Cultural relativism] licenses the envy of the untalented, giving rise to what has been called the revenge of failure: Those who cannot paint destroy the canons of painting; those who cannot write reject canonical literature.

The gap between ideals and actualities, between dreams and achievements, the gap that can spur strong men to increased exertions, but can break the spirit of others -- this gap is the most conspicuous, continuous land mark in American history. It is conspicuous and continuous not because Americans achieve little, but because they dream grandly. The gap is a standing reproach to Americans; but it marks them off as a special and singularly admirable community among the world's peoples.

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

Canada has one great novelist (Robertson Davies), which means it has one for every twenty-five million citizens - the world's highest ratio.