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

In response to the challenge of strangers, sport arose as a sublimated representation of a community's armed might as well as its pride of place and clan.

Although the world proved not yet ready for the brotherhood of baseball, that would be only a matter of time, baseball magnates believed.

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.

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

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.