He cites the idea that every spring baseball starts up again, and as such it has become a ritual of the season. He cites the mythology that grows up around the players and lasts for generations, the near godliness of figures like Babe Ruth, the identification of the game with our country.
Happily, both in his lecture and in the interview, Piccione stopped before his musings got too ponderous. He finished both with a reading from his own version of Ernest Lawrence Thayer's Casey at the Bat, which ends, alas, just as badly for the home team: "O' somewhere in the Aten's circuit, the sun is shining bright, Nubian drums play somewhere and Hittite hearts are light/In Babylon men are laughing, in Nineveh children shout, But there is no joy in Mud-brickville, Great Pharaoh has struck out."
RSS