By the way–speaking of baseball–when

By the way–speaking of baseball–when Deacon and I were college juniors, we had an argument about which was better, baseball or football. I argued for football, and got whipped. That rekindled my interest in baseball, and in the spring of 1971 Deacon and I went to Boston to see Sonny Siebert and the Red Sox take on the Oakland A’s and their rookie sensation, Vida Blue. There was more or less a riot in the street outside of Kenmore Square, and the will call window gave away our tickets long before we got there. We didn’t get into the park until the fifth inning. But I was hooked nevertheless. Deacon did the best baseball predictions I’ve ever seen; he took a course in statistics for the sole purpose of making his predictions more sophisticated, and probably could have taught Bill James a thing or two. Years later he tried to persuade me, much less successfully, that soccer was as good a game as baseball. Let’s hope they don’t go on strike.