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The choirs that sing of baseball can get pretty moist--green grass,
beautiful proportions, fathers playing catch with sons--sometimes you'd
think we were talking about brotherhood, God and Mom and not some game
played with a stick and a ball. More bad sentences have been committed in
its name than in that of every other sport.
But there have been more good ones too. One of the best is from A. Bartlett
Giamatti, who was Commissioner of Baseball back when there was still a
Commissioner of Baseball. "Baseball is about going home," Giamatti wrote,
"and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need."
Certainly that need could not have been more driven, more powerful than it
was in the political plague year just passing. We needed Mark McGwire in
1998, needed him desperately. He couldn't banish the stain of sleaze that
leached through our public life this year, nor could he restore civility to
our discourse or turn the media's attention to rotten schools or Serbian
brutality. He is, after all, only a baseball player.
More on This Story:
TIME: Hero of 1998
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