Baseball is a rookie, his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream.

A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That's baseball.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Baseball is the president tossing out the first ball of the season. And a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.

There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That's baseball.

Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.