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.

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.

Life is more about losing than winning.

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.

Just because I am increasingly bored by sabermetric arcana doesn't mean anyone else has to be; it remains good for people who like that sort of thing.

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.

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.