Innings and afternoons. Fly lost in sunset. Throwing arm gone bad. There's your old ball game.... Cool reek of the field. Reek of companions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would shew him, as a specimen of its ills, an hospital full of diseases, a ...prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcases, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only shewing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, ...but it isn't exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a pastoral game, baseball attempts to close the gap between the players and the crowd. It creates the illusion, for instance, t...hat with a lot a hard work, a little luck, and possibly some extra talent, the average spectator might well be playing; not watching. For most of us can do a few of the things that ball players can do: catch a pop-up, field a ground ball, and maybe get a hit once in a while.... As a heroic game, football is not concerned with a shared community of near-equals. It seeks almost the opposite relationship between its spectators and players, one which stresses the distance between them. We are not allowed to identify directly with Jim Brown any more than we are with Zeus, because to do so would undercut his stature as something more than human.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How sweet I roam'd from field to field And tasted all the summer's pride,... Till I the Prince of Love beheld Who in the sunny beams did glide!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[John] Brough's majority is "glorious to behold." It is worth a big victory in the field. It is decisive as to the disposition of ...the people to prosecute the war to the end. My regiment and brigade were both unanimous for Brough [the Union party candidate for governor of Ohio].LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear'd,... My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop'd well his form, Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet, And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited, Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim, Vigil for boy of responding kisses, ( never again on earth responding,) Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten'd, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day,... One look I but gave which your dear eyes return'd with a look I shall never forget, One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach'd up as you lay on the ground,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »