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

My egotistical concern was less that I would fail to relate to my classmates than that they would know nothing of my uniquely tortured life's course and, thus, me.

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

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.

This was nostalgia in the literal Greek sense: the pain of not being able to return to one's home and family.

Whatever else I do before finally I go to my grave, I hope it will not be looking after young people.

Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.