
 |
|
May 25, 2012
Mark Clayton: Is Hillary's State Dept. hacking Al Qaeda? Not quite
Erika Bolstad: Temple cancels Wasserman Schultz speech
The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman: The former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with contemporary Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Sweet Noodle Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread
May 24, 2012
Jeff Jacoby: The peace process battered Israel's reputation
Michael Muskal: 'Pro-choice' position hits record low, according to poll
Chris Farrell: Are We in a Tech Bubble?
The Kosher Gourmet by Penelope Wall: PHILLY CHEESE STEAKS --- hold the steak!
May 23, 2012
Tony Pugh: More private colleges offering tuition discounts
Mary Beth Franklin: How to Choose the Right Annuity for You
Tina Susman: The wig wasn't enough: Man gets 13 years for posing as his dead mom
The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen:A simple way to do fish right
May 22, 2012
Warren Richey: Can US group challenge overseas surveillance act? Supreme Court to decide
Thomas M. Anderson: Walking Away From a Mortgage
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: Enjoy a celebration of the most rich and layered flavors: Black bean, sweet potato and quinoa chili
May 21, 2012
Mark Clayton: Cybersecurity: How US utilities passed up chance to protect their networks
Howard LaFranchi: NATO summit: Who will foot the bill for long-term Afghanistan security?
Chris Farrell : Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Stephen Whiteside, Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Social anxiety disorder --- or just shy?
Guy Jackson : Victim's father regrets death of Lockerbie bomber
The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: Famed chef's veal shoulder farsumagru: A festive meat course for late spring
May 18, 2012
Rabbi Berel Wein: Striving: The People of the Book's Book for (All of) the People
Steven Goldberg: 5 Great Stock Picks and the Exchange-Traded Fund that Owns Them
Mary Pickett, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Don't be forced into gluten-free lifestyle based merely on a doctor's false-positive test
The Kosher Gourmet by Carolyn Malcoun: DIY healthy lunchbox treats: HOMEMADE FRUIT BARS for kids and brown-bagging adults alike
May 17, 2012
Warren Richey: Teacher fired for being unwed and pregnant can sue religious school, court rules
Josh Mitnick: Netanyahu's 'centrist' coalition is already proving it's anything but
Steven Goldberg: Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Amina Khan: Research links coffee to lower death rates
The Kosher Gourmet by Faith Duran : Cheesy Potato Breakfast Casserole with Cheddar and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
May 16, 2012
Carmen Terzic, M.D., Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: A variety of exercises can help improve balance
Melissa Healy: National strategy on Alzheimer's disease aims to halt it by 2025
The Kosher Gourmet by Joyce White : GOODNESS GRACIOUS: GREENS! 4 winning recipes that are no longer just for down-home folks (Includes expert tips & techniques)
May 15, 2012
Kristen Chick: Obama administration resumes arms sales to Bahrain despite serious unresolved human rights issues. Activists feel abandoned
Pat Mertz Esswein: Homes are now affordable again and mortgage rates are low. What you need to know before you buy
Kathy Kristof: Our Practical Investor Fights Inflation with These 6 Investments
Sue Hubbard, M.D.: The Kid's Doctor: Lactose intolerant young child? Check again
The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Hunt: Spread a Little Excitement with EXOTIC CONDIMENTS (4 RECIPES)
May 14, 2012
Lisa Gerstner: How to Protect Your Identity, Finances If You Lose Your Phone
Harvard Health Letters: Heart disease and dementia
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: MANGO COCONUT OAT MORNING MUFFINS are a bright but hearty delight
May 11, 2012
Jessica L. Anderson: Get the Best Deal on a Used Car
Jett Stone: Forget face-lifts and fake knees. Scientists have seen the fountain of youth --- and it's broccoli
The Kosher Gourmet by Chef Mario Batali: The famed chef's vegetable dish that tastes true to the season: FAVAS AND SUGAR SNAP PEAS WITH POTATOES AND TARRAGON
May 10, 2012
Sergei L. Loiko: Putin sends warning to U.S., NATO in Victory Day speech at Red Square
Mary Rourke: How being a 'mentch' got Vidal Sasoon his start and fighting in Israel's War of Independence provided him with confidence and a strong sense of his own identity
Jeff Bertolucci: Get Home Phone Service for Less Than $10 a Month
The Kosher Gourmet by Betty Rosbottom: Gleaming with its golden, crimson, and snowy white hues, this silken smooth and creamy STRAWBERRY ORANGE TRIFLE looks impressive, but is easy to prepare
May 9, 2012
Sharon Palmer, R.D. How you can reduce your risk -- or delay -- chronic diseases associated with aging
|
| |
Jewish World Review
April 26, 2010
/ 12 Iyar 5770
Recalled to Life
By
Paul Greenberg
| 
|
|
|
| |
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
LITTLE ROCK For a baseball fan, there's life and there's the off-season. Life returned to these parts at 7:10 p.m. on a fine Thursday evening in flowering April. That's when the opening pitch was thrown of the Arkansas Travelers' first home game of the season against the Midland (Tex.) Rockhounds.
Let a painterly writer like John Updike write rapturously about that "lyric little bandbox of a ball park" up in Boston called Fenway in prose as high-priced as tickets to a Red Sox game. He never got to see the little jewel that is Dickey-Stephens Park in its perfect setting alongside the Arkansas River, backlit by the skyline of a just-right-sized American city on the cusp between Upper and Lower South.
There is a special brightness to everything on the opening night of the season at a minor-league ballpark as the crowd begins to jell and the sense of anticipation slowly swells. It hits you as you pass through the gate and get your first glimpse of that green, green field of dreams. So familiar, yet so fresh and untouched. Everything shines: the signs in the outfield, the bright white baselines. The stars shine bright deep in the heart of ... the Texas League.
All is as it should be: It's spring, the stars and planets move to the music of the spheres, and the geometry of the game remains perfect. Home plate is a pentagon, the infield a diamond. Theoretically a batter could keep fouling off pitches without limit, and a tie game could go on forever, the innings continuing into infinity. Baseball is an Einsteinian phenomenon: Time and space merge. Here war, famine, pestilence, death and all that transient editorial grist have been left behind. You're in clockless baseball time now, floating free.
But outside the ballpark, time has taken its revenge. References to baseball as the national pastime are now made in the past tense, or ironically. The power and force of football, with its air of gladiatorial combat, have triumphed over the old-time grace of this most American game. Just as the old republic has given way to a mass democracy, a sense of place to globalization, and the dream of splendid isolation to the dictates of empire. It's a story as old as Rome.
Something of ineffable beauty and grace at the kernel of American life will be lost if this game is ever completely eclipsed. Reason will have fled to brutish beasts, most of them in the stands. The very intricacy of this most American game testifies to the Republic's continuing devotion, however strained, to law, ritual, tradition, a measured pace. It is a game made for conservatives.
I remember the last time I visited Richard S. Arnold, an Arkansas jurist who, along with Learned Hand, was surely the finest judge never to have served on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was confined to his hospital bed, a Prometheus bound by IV tubes. But if his body was taking its leave, Richard Arnold's ever-nimble mind, which age could not wither nor custom stale, was completely absorbed in ... watching a baseball game on television.
"Do you like baseball?" he asked me. A rhetorical question if there ever was one. Whereupon he made sure I got a copy of a classic little essay out of a law review, "The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule." A nation so constitutionally attached to rules and their interpretation, even in its play, has not yet lost its genius for continuity.
Baseball may be fading as the national pastime, but for one glorious spring night, as you climb off the streetcar in North Little Rock, Ark., and set your mouth for the first beer and hot dog, life has returned and the years drop away. Some things are still the same, even better for still being there after all these years. There are still four bases in the infield, kids in the bleachers, and ham-handed infielders.
Oh, yes, the game itself. Between the Travs' Laurel-and-Hardy fielding and the Rockhounds' hitting, it was a rout: 11 to 1. But it simplifies matters greatly if you're the kind of fan who just roots for the team in the field. That way, local passions are kept at bay, and don't obscure the grace of the game. You can have your dramatic home runs; give me the classic, balletic double play.
But there'll be another game the next night. And sure enough, the Travs would come back to win it 3 to 0. Or as Earl Weaver, legendary manager of the Baltimore Orioles, once told a critic who wanted to know why baseball wasn't any faster: "This ain't a football game, we do this every day." That's the great consolation of a long season. If you don't do well one day, there's always tomorrow. In that respect, it's not unlike writing a newspaper column.
As with American history, there is something assuring about the continuity of the game. Every year the season begins as hopeful as an Appalachian spring, becomes as long as a Southern summer, and its end can be as poignant as a New England fall. So long as there's cricket, there'll always be an England. So long as there's baseball, there'll be an America.
G0d, I love this game!
G0d, I love this country.
Paul Greenberg Archives
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
include "/usr/web/jewishworldreview.com/t-ssi/jwr_squaread_300x250.php";
if (strpos(, "printer_friendly") === 0)
{}
else {
=<<
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Alan Douglas
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
Marybeth Hicks
A. Barton Hinkle
David Horowitz
Jeff Jacoby
Renee James
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Ben Wattenberg
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
Tech Maven
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|