People Will Say I'm An

For Me, Baseball Is The Most Nourishing Game Outside Of Literature. They Both Are Re-tellings Of Human Experience.

The Gods Have Fled, I Know. My Sense Is The Gods Have Always Been Essentially Absent. I Do Not Believe Human Beings Have Played Games Or Sports From The Beginning Merely To Summon Or To Please Or To Appease The Gods. If Anthropologists And Historians Believe That, It Is Because They Believe Whatever They Have Been Able To Recover About What Humankind Told The Gods Humankind Was Doing. I Believe We Have Played Games, And Watched Games, To Imitate The Gods, To Become Godlike In Our Worship Of Eachother And, Through Those Moments Of Transmutation, To Know For An Instant What The Gods Know.

Baseball Is About Homecoming. It Is A Journey By Theft And Strength, Guile And Speed, Out Around First To The Far Island Of Second, Where Foes Lurk In The Reefs And The Green Sea Suddenly Grows Deeper, Then To Turn Sharply, Skimming The Shallows, Making For A Shore That Will Show A Friendly Face, A Color, A Familiar Language And, At Third, To Proceed, No Longer By Paths Indirect But Straight, To Home.

I'm The World's Expert On Sterotypes Held By Academics About Athletes And Held By Athletes About Academics. To Me, Both Of Them Are Caricatures.

Major Sports Are Major Parts Of Society. It's Not Anomalous To Have People Who Love Sports Come From Other Parts Of That Society.