Baseball is the president tossing out the first ball of the season. And a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.

There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That's baseball.

Baseball is a rookie, his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream.

When I went to Brooklyn in 1948 Jackie Robinson was at the height of his brilliant career.

Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.