It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. – A. Bartlett Giamatti, "The Green Fields of the Mind," Yale Alumni Magazi

Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words. – Ernie Harwell, "The Game for All America," 1955

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. – George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, 1990