The Bonds Rule

Baseball is an opportunity to share in Americana.  When I walk into a ball park, no matter its size or location, the level of play, the age of participant, I feel better.  I often wondered why.  It is certainly, for enthusiasts and former practitioners, no matter how unskilled, a delight to watch a baseball game, where tension and excitement can be found or ignored at the spectator’s choice.  But I have come to believe that finding one’s seat, or even before that, at the first glimpse of the infield, bestows upon such as I, a sense of good fortune unavailable any place else.  Has it to do with the rest of the world’s state of disarray, or the impermanency of life, or the crumbling form of our nation’s institutions?  It is not the buildings to which I refer, but the values that, it was thought, drove the public discourse and protected our historic trajectory as the world’s leading democracy. Continue reading →