"Baseball suits the character of this democratic nation. Democracy is government by persuasion. That means it requires patience; that means it involves a lot of compromise. Democracy is the slow politics of the half-loaf. Baseball is the game of the long season where small incremental differences decide who wins and who loses particular games, series, seasons. In baseball, you know going to the ballpark that the chances are you may win, but you also may lose. There's no certainty, no given. You know when a season starts that the best team is going to get beaten a third of the time; the worst team is going to win a third of the time. The argument, over 162 games, is that middle third. So it's a game you can’t like if winning is everything. And democracy is that way, too."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
George Will
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Baseball_(TV_series)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Baseball (TV series)
Baseball is a series created by Ken Burns, about the evolution of the game of baseball, produced by PBS in 1994. In its original broadcast, it was divided into 9 episodes or "innings", which were narrated by John Chancellor. A 10th inning, which focuses on Baseball since the 1994–95 Major League Baseball Players' Strike, was completed and broadcast in 2010.
96 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Baseball (TV series) →
Related Quotes
"It is played everywhere: in parks and playgrounds, prison yards, in back alleys and farmers’ fields; by small boys an…"
"It's fun. That's what it is. It's fun. Baseball's more fun than anything else. You can watch it and just love it and …"
"One summer day in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, on the shores of Lake Otsego, the local academy was playing a game o…"
"1786: a fine day. Play ball in the campus, but am beaten, for I miss catching and striking the ball."
"Of all baseball’s ancestors, townball was by far the most popular. Under its rules, the infield was square. Eight to …"
"By the spring of 1861, there were 62 member clubs in the National Association of Base Ball Players. Free Blacks in no…"
"Virginia, April 3, 1862. It is astonishing how indifferent a person can become to danger. The report of musketry is h…"
"I got a letter the other day asking why I didn't write about baseball no more, as I used to write about nothing else,…"
"In October 1867, as federal troops enforced civil rights laws in the South, the African-American Pythian Baseball Clu…"
"Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1846: In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have obs…"