What did it matter, Babe Ruth or Jersey Joe Stripp? If vector analysis was beyond me, I could still watch a ball game. - Roger Kahn

In the dead sunlight of a forgotten spring the major leaguers were trim, graceful and effortless. They might have been gods for these seemed true Olympians to a boy who wanted to become a manand who sensed that it was an exalted manly thing to catch a ball with one hand thrust across your body and make a crowd leap to its feet and cheer.

In the intimacy of Ebbets Field it was a short trip from the grandstand to the fantasy you were in the game.

Being and writing, the road asked nothing more.