God's One True Sport
Ben Myers has posted a new set of propositions from Kim Fabricius: Ten reasons why baseball is God's game. A few of my favorites are:

2. Baseball is about coming home. The whole point of the game is to finish where you begin – home plate – and once you are home you are finally safe.
“In my beginning is my end…
Home is where one starts from…
In my end is my beginning.”
(T. S. Eliot, “East Coker”)

5. It has its saints – e.g. Lou Gehrig (the Iron Horse) and Jackie Robinson (the first African-American player of the modern era) – and sinners – e.g. “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (who took a bribe) and Barry Bonds (who is alleged to have taken steroids). And there is the Great Satan: the New York Yankees.

8. It has its Suffering Servant, viz. the Chicago Cubs, the “Cubbies,” a team annually “like a sheep led to the slaughter” (and crucial to the game is the play called the “sacrifice”). But “Cub fans love the Cubs, warts and all, no questions asked. This quality is called faith” (Peter Glenbock).

This made me think of one of George Carlin's classic routines where he compares baseball and football. Here are a few of his insights:

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

In football you receive a penalty.
In baseball you make an error.

Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
Football has the two minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death.
--from Baseball Almanac

How true, how true. Baseball is so sweet, especially in person. We're even going to be getting our own new stadium here in the Twin Cities for our Minnesota Twins. While I do look forward to some good outdoor baseball, I also wonder about games in April and October, especially the end of October when we get back to the World Series again. Minnesota can be cruel with her weather.

Of course we can also root for global warming to keep us out of trouble.