Cheating is baseball's oldest profession. No other game is so rich in skullduggery, so suited to it or so proud of it.

The best place to catch a baseball hit by (Mark) McGwire is definitely not within the confines of the playing field, or sometimes even the ballpark. Other players dial '1' for long distance. McGwire has to ask for an international operator.

Football is played best full of adrenaline and anger. Moderation seldom finds a place. Almost every act of baseball is a blending of effort and control; too much of either is fatal.

Conversation is the blood of baseball. It flows through the game, an invigorating system of anecdotes. Ballplayers are tale tellers who have polished their malarkey and winnowed their wisdom for years.

An almost inexorable baseball law: A Red Sox ship with a single leak will always find a way to sink No team is worshipped with such a perverse sense of fatality.

Baseball is really two sports -- the summer game and the autumn game. One is the leisurely pastime of our national mythology. The other is not so gentle.

More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.