These things I know to be true about baseball

A knee-buckling, 12-6 curveball is the single most amazing event in baseball.

Standing at the plate and admiring your own homerun is childish and juvenile. Unless you're the one who hit it.

It's my Hall of Fame, and I can have whomever the hell I want in it. So can you. Why is this even a matter of discussion?

We still admire complete games.

Baseball is a game of tradition, and celebrates its past better than any other sport. Ignoring that will not allow you to enjoy the game in the best possible way.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, without exception, loves the play at the plate.

(as a note, this is not about collisions. This is the slide, the sweep tag, the expectation)

Life isn’t black and white, and there are unwritten rules in every aspect of it, be it dealing with a spouse, a family member, office politics, or trying to talk a police officer out of a speeding ticket. Making fun of ball players for talking about theirs does not make you a better person than them. It just means that you have failed to grasp the basic realities of life, and I’ll bet your relationships reflect that.

For all the talk of homeruns, slugging percentages, and high-powered offenses, nothing will get you to stand up and cheer with a look of awe on your face like a great defensive play.

Any player hitting their first career homerun should be allowed to stand at the plate and admire it, and then celebrate it in any manner they want without repercussion. But only for the first one.

75% of the people who write or comment on the personnel lives of players and mistakes they make do so not as a condemnation of the player's faults, but as an appeasement of their own.

Segregation is the biggest blight on the history of baseball, and nothing will ever make it right. But denigrating the accomplishments of white players who played in the environment they were given does not give the Negro League players the "respect they deserve". They already have it.

Writing about baseball has changed, because it is no longer about the game, the action on the field, or what caused the action to happen. Maybe a few fluff pieces on the players. We don't need that anymore, because now we have mass media that gives us 24-hour access to everything that happens instantaneously. We don't want to read about the game tomorrow when we can see it today. This has caused writing about baseball to move into the periphery of the game, the off the field action, and the players personal lives. Writing about baseball isn't about the game anymore. That's secondary. It's about what surrounds the game. I don't like it, I don't have to like, and you can't make me like it. But I do have to accept it, because the world moves on. But how I yearn to hear one more reference to the “ ‘ol horsehide”.

Third-string catcher on a major league roster is the greatest job in the world.

The ball is round, the bat is a cylinder, and the base paths are a square. Everything else is gravy.

Intangibles do exist, and no, you can’t measure them. The reason you can’t measure them is because they are intangibles, and therefore, immeasurable. Failing to understand this might let you solve for x, but it does mean you don’t understand the intricacies of the game, and how it is affected by them.

Lesser players do not cheapen the Hall of Fame. We over-idolize individuals in a team sport. Even the '27 Yankees and '75 Reds had utility infielders.

A straight steal of third off of the pitcher is sweeeeeeeeeeeet.

If you choose to enjoy the game using traditional statistics such as batting average, errors and pitchers wins, that is your right, and no one has the right to tell you that you're wrong. It's your game as surely as it is anyone else's, and you are free to experience it in whatever manner you decide. Anyone who disagrees is politely invited to go to hell.

Baseball is a game and a sport. Again, baseball is a game and a sport. Repeat, baseball is a game and a sport. Anyone who doesn't understand that baseball is a business and played for money, and no other reason, is living in a fantasy world. Repeat after me: baseball is a game and a sport.

My home park IS so better than your home park.

Winning your fantasy league championship does not give you the qualifications to be a major league general manager.

Pitchers that hit homeruns rock. Pitchers that hit triples are Elvis.

Pinch hit homeruns have the power to stop time.

If you are under the age of 60 and fail to grasp the basic concepts of sabermetrics and why it is important, you are allowed to be corrected at every opportunity. Politely, and without rancor. If you are under 25, you are allowed to mocked and ridiculed.

I'm scared of the wall, and so are you.

You cannot compare players across eras. Please stop. It just cheapens the accomplishments of all of them.

No matter how much in our mind we are the superstar slugger, in reality we are the fourth outfielder.

You would trade everything but your family for one game.