A narrative voice with conviction is often hard to find. But not in baseball. The minors teach two lost American arts: how to chew tobacco and how to tell a story.

A major golf tournament is 40,000 sadists watching 144 masochists.

As every golfer knows, no one ever lost his mind over one shot. It is rather the gradual process of shot after shot watching your score go to tatters - knowing that you have found a different way to bogey each hole.

Baseball is not necessarily an obsessive-compulsive disorder, like washing your hands 100 times a day, but it's beginning to seem that way. We're reaching the point where you can be a truly dedicated, state-of-the-art fan or you can have a life. Take your pick.

When life is suddenly more serious more of the time, there is also more need for it to be fun at least some of the time. That's why my family will be at a college football game this weekend. We need it. And deserve it, too. Not like a New York fireman deserves it. Or a medic at the Pentagon. But enough.

Quarterbacks have to ask the crowd to quiet down. Pitchers never do.

When you fall in love with golf, you seldom fall easy. Itʹs obsession at first sight.