And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability by 'running the game like a business.'

I'd just like to see - in writing about baseball - more energy and better craft, minus statistical bludgeoning and invective.

The caliber of play suffered and attendance declined year by year. Interest in college football was exploding, and there was this new game called basketball.

We play because we are wired for joy; it is imperative as human beings.

Just because I am increasingly bored by sabermetric arcana doesn't mean anyone else has to be; it remains good for people who like that sort of thing.

If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century.

Better than anything else in our culture, it enables fathers and sons to speak on a level playing field while building up from within a personal history of shared experience - a group history - that may be tapped into at will in years to come.