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.

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

Except in expert hands, stats can get in the way of story; an array of data that might better be presented in a table instead clogs up sentences.

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

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

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.

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.