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

Whatever else I do before finally I go to my grave, I hope it will not be looking after young people.

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

Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.

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.

Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling - baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail.

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.