Baseball: "In the Beginning was a Civil War hero..."

I'm currently devouring Bully For Brontosaurus, by Stephen Jay Gould. Anybody who loved natural history, science, baseball, and the exercise of the written language as much as he does is okay in my book, even if he was a Pinko socialist at heart.

In the essay "The Creation Myths of Cooperstown", he discusses baseball's true origins vis a vis the myth of Doubleday and Cooperstown presented by Albert Spalding, parenthetically comparing them to the current debates on evolution and abortion. Regardless of one's views on the topics referred to, the essay is worth the read if only for gems like the following:

"The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with a stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum. (The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway.)"

Amen. ;)