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

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.'

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

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

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

But baseball bounced back in the next decade to reclaim its place as the national pastime: new heroes, spirited competition, and booming prosperity gave birth to dreams of expansion, both within the major leagues and around the world.