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.

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

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.

Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our national pastime, our national symbol, and our national treasure.

And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability by 'running the game like a business.'

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.

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.