“More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.”

“[B]aseball is diffracted by the town and ballpark where it is played... Does baseball, like a liquid, take the shape of its container?”

“The crowd and its team had finally understood that in games, as in many things, the ending, the final score, is only part of what matters. The process, the pleasure, the grain of the game count too.”

“What most people want to keep under wraps (from reporters) is trivial: petty jealousies, professional feuds, etc. By contrast, most of the things they have thought about most seriously all their lives they are perfectly winning to uncover.”

“Familiarity, and a few dozen cheap flyballs off the Monster, breed contempt.”

“If it rained knowledge, I'd hold out my hand; but I would not give myself the trouble to go in quest of it.”

“Fortunately for the historian, the court to which his evidence is submitted has no fixed term; interesting cases can be argued before it indefinitely. The jury can remain out for as long as it takes to gather the requisite data and come to a sound decision... the historian can watch with delight or consternation as the case is tried and retried by others, who may prove his hunches right or wrong." The Kindness of Strangers”