Baseball, like Pericles' Athens (or any other good society), is simultaneously democratic and aristrocratic. Anyone can enjoy it, but the more you apply yourself, the more you enjoy it.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that baseball embodies both democratic and aristocratic elements, where everyone can partake, but deeper engagement leads to greater enjoyment.
George Will compares baseball to the ideal society of Pericles' Athens, highlighting that baseball is open to all, yet rewards those who invest effort and passion into it. This dual nature reflects a broader truth about life and society: while accessibility is crucial, true fulfillment often requires dedication and hard work, making it both a shared experience and a pursuit of excellence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of hard work and dedication in achieving success.
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?
I'm one of those introverted people who simply feels a lot better after spending time alone thinking through ideas and emotions. This is a sign, I've come to think, of a kind of emotional disturbance - a reaction to inner fragility. I wish I were more able to just act and do, rather than constantly have to retreat and examine and think.
Music is essentially useless, as is life.
All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.
Ah! How I hate the crimes of the new generation: they are dry and sterile as darnel.
The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.
And so they are ever returning to us, the dead. At times they come back from the ice more than seven decades later and are found at the edge of the moraine, a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots.
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