I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.

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.

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.

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

For many in baseball September is a month of stark contrast with April, when everyone had dared to hope. If baseball is a lot like life, as pundits declare, it is because 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.

If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century.