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.

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

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

Planning to play: that's what saving for retirement is today - and it is antithetical to the nature of play, fully within the definition of work, and blissfully ignorant of the reality of death.

Why we play as children is not because it is our work or because it is how we learn, though both statements are true; we play because we are wired for joy, it is imperative as human beings.