Eleanor Roosevelt said: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people” … and everybody else talks about sports. (Sure beats the weather!) Sports can be a controversial subject, but not in the way sex, politics, and religion are.
When the Civil War ended, baseball emerged victorious with a growing popularity over cricket. More recently Henry Chadwick introduced the box score in coverage of baseball, statistics given nine figures across and nine figures down, like a Sudoku puzzle, but not as set in outcome.
Sports and law have many similarities. Both are governed by rules and judges, and both rely on a certain amount of statistical analysis to predict outcome. Both also rely on personalities. Two batters aren’t going to hit the same pitch the same way, just the way the same argument presented to two different judges can render opposite verdicts. That’s what keeps sports interesting, and the law.
Baseball is nearly as
American as the Judicial Branch. Both
allow for differences, but differences within a reliable framework. And both make for great conversation.
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