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

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

We know these men are professionals whose services are up for bid and whose bags are packed, and yet we call them our own and take personal, even civic pride in their accomplishments.

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

Life is more about losing than winning.

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.

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.