Baseball, of all sports, and maybe of all human endeavors, has no room for cynicism.

Rick Bass is one of a dwindling handful of American fiction writers still celebrating the importance of place, the natural world, and the struggle of a few brave souls to live and work respectfully in what's left of our western wilderness...The Lives of Rocks is his most lyrical and powerful book to date...a masterwork.

Baseball, of all sports, and maybe of all human endeavors, has no room for cynicism.

There was a code, and though it was mostly unspoken, I absorbed it early on. You always put all the trout back in the water alive except for a few to eat. You didn't count your trout or call attention to their size or weight. You took time to watch and enjoy seeing your partners catch trout.

I've admired Bill Kauffman's books for years . . . appealing, elegantly written, and entirely American.

Faith without a measure of doubt ain't worth a brass farthin.