Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that while baseball may be perceived as just a game, its significance can be profound, much like the Grand Canyon is more than just a geographical feature.
George Will uses the comparison of baseball to the Grand Canyon to convey that some things in life, while seemingly trivial, hold greater meaning and importance. He emphasizes that not everything is the same, and just because something is categorized as a game or a hole, it does not diminish its value or the experiences it can provide, reflecting on the deeper significance that certain activities and places hold in our lives.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of sports in culture.
The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.
The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint.
Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.
Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?
A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.
My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, and not of the intellectual faculties.
Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
These systems attempt to box God into a government confined within the perspective of man. Yet when humanity is used as the starting point for interpreting and interacting with God's creation, faulty theology and sociology emerge as mankind attempts to fashion God into the image of man.
And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five what remains?" "Three hundred and sixty-four, of course." Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful, "I'd rather see that done on paper," he said.
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