In football, on each play eleven men act in unison, and in each action not the individual but the corporate unit acts. When bart Starr completed a pass for the Green Bay Packers, all the Packers could be said to share the deed; one man alone is quite helpless. When Joe Di—aggio stepped to the plate in Yankee Stadium with his unforgettable stance and fluid swing, Di—aggio stood in spotlighted solitude, and none of his teammates could act in his behalf. Football is corporate, baseball an association of individuals.
—Michael Novak (b. 1933)
It’s just a game—baseball—an amusement, a marginal thing, not an art, not a consequential metaphor for life, not a public trust. It may have broken bart Giamatti’s sentimental heart, but it will never break mine.... In its behind-the-scenes machinations as sport, baseball has developed unexpected ties to big-time professional wrestling, with that strange spectacle’s buffoonish, self-important, overstuffed Steinbrennerish management types spouting gibberish about the best interests of this and such and the need for moral direction, all in counterpoise to sullenly big-muscled, bad-boy superstars nattering and snuffling about not getting any respect and not being in it for the dough, and being in it for the dough.
—Richard Ford (b. 1944)