But the dream is never forgotten, only put aside and never out of reach: Where once the dream connected boys with the world of men, now it reconnects men with the spirit of boys.

Except in expert hands, stats can get in the way of story; an array of data that might better be presented in a table instead clogs up sentences.

It says, I think, that at root that we're children, or we'd like to be. And the best of us each keep as much of that childhood with us as we grow into adulthood, as we can muster... And even after we're past the point of being able to play the game with any skill, if we love it, then it's like Peter Pan - we remain boys forever, we don't die.

I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.

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.

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.