Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.

We play because we are wired for joy; it is imperative as human beings.

The caliber of play suffered and attendance declined year by year. Interest in college football was exploding, and there was this new game called basketball.

In response to the challenge of strangers, sport arose as a sublimated representation of a community's armed might as well as its pride of place and clan.

Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our national pastime, our national symbol, and our national treasure.

My egotistical concern was less that I would fail to relate to my classmates than that they would know nothing of my uniquely tortured life's course and, thus, me.

But the dream is never forgotten, only put aside and never out of reach: Where once the dream connected boys with the world of men, now it reconnects men with the spirit of boys.

Award trophies, as opposed to letting the players define and claim their own. Ultimately, pay them to play so that their activity not only resembles work but is work.

We know these men are professionals whose services are up for bid and whose bags are packed, and yet we call them our own and take personal, even civic pride in their accomplishments.

Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.

In over 160 years of recorded baseball history, no team had ever won a championship this way.

Bite me, Harry Potter.

Why should I be sad? Everyone has to die. If you have a body, it's too late to cry. It's only funerals I can't stand.

I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal.

Courage is an act of faith.

Hatred is as easy as slipping on a well-worn woolen cloak. If only it provided the comfort of one.

Who you are, what you are, does not change after you occupy the oval office. All it does is magnify who you are. All it does is shine a spotlight on who you are.

All the world loves a clown.

Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.

Sometimes you dance with a partner, and sometimes you dance alone. But the important thing is to keep dancing.

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn't eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!