Sir;...Why does anyone want to write about baseball??? Is it a metaphore for all things American??? Is it less troubled by the vagaries and vicissitudes of fate than this broad land???Is it less certain there that the good shall go down in defeat while the vicious and unscrupulous triumph??? God sets a judge before all men, and knowledge is judgement said the Kant; but what does any one do when the judge is as blind as justice????Verily, the heroic and gentle will be laid at the feet of the strong, for that is the law of the land... And what shall good folk do??? If only the government were so easily canned as poor managers....I think the game is all tied up...I don't think Baseball works as a metaphore any better than the country works...I think big money is killing both...Money takes the virtue out of people, but it also takes the fun out of the game... The same sense of value that makes stadiums valuable realestate makes every urban ball park into valuable realestate... The same logic that makes the labor of one man more valuable than any other doing a roughly similar job leaves us all dependent upon the kindness of the owner... We need parks, and we need incentives for kids to play in them...They need to be watched, policed, cleaned, and safe...If there is not enough money at the bottom of baseball, the money at the top will only buy the infidelity of overgrown children...Only those kids who have actually played the game will ever fall in love with it, and support it... Well, the same is true of the society, that success must be ever evident...People who cannot play the game; and we are now to accept that 10% of the population who want to play the game will no longer be able to, will have no reason to love it... Ten percent of a population is enough to bring a society down... If too much wealth concentrated in too few hands can ruin baseball, it can ruin this society, and I see that it has... All that stuff of fate aside, we need to make our own luck...We need to take matters into our own hands, dare fate, and hit the big one, or go down swinging...America is Baseball, and Baseball is America... It is not a spectator sport no matter how much we watch it on t.v.... Thanks...Sweeney