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.

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

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.'

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

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.

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

Although the world proved not yet ready for the brotherhood of baseball, that would be only a matter of time, baseball magnates believed.