Aside from trout fishing, baseball suffers most from the tender mercies of intellectuals. In his 1991 bestseller, "Men at Work," George F. Will memorably called St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog "the National League's Spinoza." Another brainy baseball lover, the New Hampshire poet Donald Hall, couched his 26-page, "nine-inning" poem "Baseball" as an imagined dialogue with the deceased German artist ... (Full article: 755 words)

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