The 2022 College Season thread got me going on this. Thought it best to start a new thread rather than fail at hijacking that one. Here's a link to a very nice piece written in 2007 by Levi Stahl on the sweet spot between baseball and poetry.
Worth a read for the curious.
Look at this great line by my buddy Walt Whitman:
“[Baseball has]...the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere.”
Stahl's line about hitters' failure, though, confuses me:
" ...Baseball, like creative work, consists largely of failure; even the best hitters have to accept that nearly six times out of ten, they’ll trudge back to the bench in defeat....."
I thought that should read nearly eight times out of ten? Anyway, it's a good read with a lot of great references to other writing about baseball, and the comments section has even more good stuff. How can you not be poetic about baseball?
Your serve, Brad (via Mr. Zaillian and Mr. Sorkin).