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

As the game enters its glorious final weeks, the chill of fall signals the reality of defeat for all but one team. The fields of play will turn brown and harden, the snow will fall, but in the heart of the fan sprouts a sprig of green.

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.

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.

Distant replay morphs into instant replay, and future replay cannot be far off.

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.

In over 160 years of recorded baseball history, no team had ever won a championship this way.