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 am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage. Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.
Religious War has signified the greatest advance of the masses so far, for it proves that the masses have begun to treat concepts with respect.
Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.
What kind of times are they, when A talk about trees is almost a crime Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
Especially when we're dealing with issues of race, culture, identity, and history, the time has passed for the 'white savior' holding the black person's hand through their own history.
All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard.
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