Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceiling... one afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating m...ysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's just a game--baseball--an amusement, a marginal thing, not an art, not a consequential metaphor for life, not a public trust.... It may have broken Bart Giamatti's sentimental heart, but it will never break mine.... In its behind-the-scenes machinations as sport, baseball has developed unexpected ties to big-time professional wrestling, with that strange spectacle's buffoonish, self-important, overstuffed Steinbrennerish management types spouting gibberish about the best interests of this and such and the need for moral direction, all in counterpoise to sullenly big-muscled, bad-boy superstars nattering and snuffling about not getting any respect and not being in it for the dough, and being in it for the dough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mother baseball. I enjoy speculating about its bloody beginnings as a fertility rite. Funny that with all the verbiage about the s...port no one mentions the obvious structural relationship between a baseball stadium and a womb: in design, a stadium is both a circle and a "Y," two notorious female symbols. The curved and sloping shape of the stands is like a plush endometrium in which we fans cozy up to watch a lone batter square off against the universe.... I especially like to think about that when announcers describe players' bats as fast, corked, dead, quiet, live, or as loaded barrels--and pitches as high hard ones.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Colonel "Bat" Guano: Okay, I'm going to get your money for you. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that ph...one, you know what's going to happen to you? Group Captain Lionel Mandrake: What? Colonel "Bat" Guano: You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.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 »
How, in one short century, has this ersatz sport so strangled the consciousness of the country in the grip of its flabby tentacles... that the mention of women's baseball gets no reaction other than blank amazement?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When Dad can't get the diaper on straight, we laugh at him as though he were trying to walk around in high-heel shoes. Do we ever ...assist him by pointing out that all you have to do is lay out the diaper like a baseball diamond, put the kid's butt on the pitcher's mound, bring home plate up, then fasten the tapes at first and third base?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In football, on each play eleven men act in unison, and in each action not the individual but the corporate unit acts. When Bart S...tarr completed a pass for the Green Bay Packers, all the Packers could be said to share the deed; one man alone is quite helpless. When Joe Di--aggio stepped to the plate in Yankee Stadium with his unforgettable stance and fluid swing, Di--aggio stood in spotlighted solitude, and none of his teammates could act in his behalf. Football is corporate, baseball an association of individuals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »