One cardinal rule of American journalism is that The New York Times Sunday Magazine is a chore, a bore, and a penance to be endured.

The ballpark is the star. In the age of Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth, the era of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams, through the empty-seats epoch of Don Buddin and Willie Tasby and unto the decades of Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, the ballpark is the star. A crazy-quilt violation of city planning principles, an irregular pile of architecture, a menace to marketing consultants, Fenway Park works. It works as a symbol of New England's pride, as a repository of evergreen hopes, as a tabernacle of lost innocence. It works as a place to watch baseball.

One cardinal rule of American journalism is that The New York Times Sunday Magazine is a chore, a bore, and a penance to be endured.

Democrats, you know, want to identify with and relate to what you're feeling, what you've been bummed out about, where your head is at.

[Television executives] are afraid to advertise condoms that could save lives, but do not blush about telecasting a National Geographic special on President Reagan's pelvic plumbing.