In over 160 years of recorded baseball history, no team had ever won a championship this way. — John Thorn Baseball Copy Share Image
One of the first lessons he or she learns is that in baseball anything, absolutely anything, can happen. Just two days ago… — John Thorn Anything can happen Copy Share Image
Why we play as children is not because it is our work or because it is how we learn, though both statements… — John Thorn Children Copy Share Image
We are fans because the game also appeals to our local pride, our pleasure in thinking of ourselves as, yes, Americans but… — John Thorn Also Copy Share Image
Pursuing employment or climatic relief, we live in voluntary exile from our extended families and our longer past, but in an involuntary… — John Thorn Employment Copy Share Image
There was much woe and lamentation in the seventies that the game was dying. — John Thorn Death Copy Share Image
The heroes of our youth grow old - 'the boys of summer in their ruin,' in Dylan Thomas's verse - yet we… — John Thorn Boys Copy Share Image
Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on… — John Thorn Baseball Copy Share Image
If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century. — John Thorn Century Copy Share Image
My egotistical concern was less that I would fail to relate to my classmates than that they would know nothing of my… — John Thorn Classmates Copy Share Image
More fundamentally, it is a dream that does not die with the onset of manhood: the dream is to play endlessly, past… — John Thorn Betray Copy Share Image
Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the… — John Thorn Baseball Copy Share Image
We know these men are professionals whose services are up for bid and whose bags are packed, and yet we call them… — John Thorn Accomplishment Copy Share Image
The National League was born the following year, as an attempt to exert the control of capital over labor. — John Thorn Attempt Copy Share Image
It says, I think, that at root that we're children, or we'd like to be. And the best of us each keep… — John Thorn Able Copy Share Image
For many of us, sport has provided the continuity in our lives, the alternative family to the one we left behind. It… — John Thorn About Copy Share Image
Distant replay morphs into instant replay, and future replay cannot be far off. — John Thorn Instant Copy Share Image
Whatever else I do before finally I go to my grave, I hope it will not be looking after young people. — John Thorn Graves Copy Share Image
I'd just like to see - in writing about baseball - more energy and better craft, minus statistical bludgeoning and invective. — John Thorn Baseball Copy Share Image
I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such. — John Thorn Anecdotes Copy Share Image
Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our… — John Thorn Baseball Copy Share Image
Except in expert hands, stats can get in the way of story; an array of data that might better be presented in… — John Thorn Data Copy Share Image
And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability… — John Thorn Baseball Copy Share Image
Just because I am increasingly bored by sabermetric arcana doesn't mean anyone else has to be; it remains good for people who… — John Thorn Bored Copy Share Image
