Baseball Issue, Fair and Foul; Great Taki on the Great War; Kelley Raises Questions, Hackles; More

MUGGER: And if the Red Sox win the Series (3/27), maybe the University of Vermont men's basketball team will go to the NCAA tournament! Heck, who woulda thunk Patriots over Rams! And maybe the Republicans will regain the Senate! Well, maybe I'm asking too much...

Gordon Smith, UVM '80, Pleasanton, CA

Baseball Mirrors Life

MUGGER: I read your article in last Friday's Wall Street Journal. You hit the nail on the head. Baseball nowadays is a bunch of phony baloney. I remember in 1966, my father took me and my brother to our first baseball game at Fenway Park. We bought peanuts for 25 cents outside the park. Once inside, we actually watched the game until the third inning, when my father bought me a hotdog marinated with way too much Gulden's mustard. I still remember how good it tasted. I saw the Red Sox pull off a triple play against the Orioles. On the way home, we stopped at a souvenir shop. My father bought us each a pennant for 75 cents. We came and left on the trolley. The whole afternoon probably set my father back 10 dollars. Nothing fancy, but altogether wholesome.

During the next few years, I often ran away from home for an afternoon on a weekend and went to Fenway with my brother. We would get there early to watch batting practice. Old men would be sitting in the stands reading the Record American and just passing time until the game started. I also went to the Boston Garden to watch the Celtics. There was something wonderful about the stale smell of that place. I don't go to sporting events anymore for the same reason I don't watch movies: too much grandiosity and not enough quality. As an aside and relevant for reasons I don't comprehend, Billy Wilder's death is apropos. He symbolized something about moviemaking on a par with what old-fashioned ballparks symbolized about sports and, I guess, what both say about the decline of quality in our lives.

Dennis Bedard, Miami

Now You're Talking

MUGGER: Great column in WSJ on 3/29. Lets go Mets!

Robert M. McAdam, Roanoke, VA

Out, Out, Damn Brock

Mike Signorile: Another impo