Being a sports fan is a complex matter, in part irrational but not unworthy; a relief from the seriousness of the real world, with its unending pressures and often grave obligations.

I don't think of myself as a critic or teacher either, but simply - and at the obvious risk of disingenuousness - as someone who teaches, writes drama criticism (and other things) and feels that the American compulsion to take your identity from your profession, with its corollary of only one trade to a practitioner, may be a convenience to society but is burdensome and constricting to yourself.

There's an appreciation, not unlike that for dancers or tightrope walkers, of the body undergoing tests and coming through them by courage and technique; a desire for "clean" results.

Baseball is a game dominated by vital ghosts; it's a fraternity, like no other we have of the active and the no longer so, the living and the dead.

Being a sports fan is a complex matter, in part irrational but not unworthy; a relief from the seriousness of the real world, with its unending pressures and often grave obligations.

I want my poor value to exist past me, somewhere else.