Baseball's rich in wonderful statistics, but it's hard to find one more beautiful than Stan Musial's hitting record. He didn't care where he was, he just hit.

Hart is still like that little tub of vaguely milklike gunk that comes with airline coffee. It is labeled a "nondairy" product. Fine: we know what is is non, but what is it?

There is an aura of changelessness to sport. There is the flux of competition, but it occurs within the ordering confinement of clear rules.

For Conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing.

Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.

An alloy of innocence and arrogance, young (Ted) Williams came to Boston when it had four morning and four evening local newspapers engaged in perpetual circulation wars. He became grist for their mills, and his wars with the sportswriters brought out the worst in him, and cost him. He won two Most Valuable Player Awards and finished second four times. Several of those times he would have won had he not had such poisonous relations with the voting press.

One radical free spirit nonconformist is pretty much like another.