National security rests on the credible threat of a form of warfare universally condemned since the Dark Ages, the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants.

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.

Greek philosophers considered sport a religious and civic-in a word, moral-undertaking. Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage.

It is an old baseball joke that big-inning baseball is affirmed in the Bible, in Genesis. "In the big inning, God created..."

Football brings out the sociologist that lurks in some otherwise respectable citizens. They say football is a metaphor for America's sinfulness.

Disparagement of television is second only to watching television as an American pastime.

In years divisible by two we expect the truth to be trashed and decency to be mugged.

Disparagement of television is second only to watching television as an American pastime.

If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone.