National Pastime

"Before I bought the Orioles, I was able to read two or three serious books a week. Now my reading has dropped to one book every two or three weeks. I'd like to go back to reading two or three serious books a week."-- Eli Jacobs, explaining in the Washington Post why he wants to sell the Orioles.Baseball owners are not your usual greed-head businessmen.No, baseball owners are very special kinds of greed-head businessmen.Let's say you are an ordinary guy with too much money on your hands. Let's say you are looking for a little investment and so you decide to buy a lawn furniture company.

Princeton, New Jersey. -- A series of unconnected events has put the ivory tower under siege. The American higher education system, revered abroad as the best in the world, is being shaken right down to its once-solid foundations, and college presidents XTC are ducking for cover."

Hallelujah. Baseball fans: Another season has begun. After a long winter, such unpleasantness as John Rocker's mouth, Darryl Strawberry's demons and Ken Griffey Jr.'s power play are soon to be consigned to distant memory. Now it's the games that matter. But let's be honest, barring a miracle like 1969 (remember '69?), this summer is going to drag on forever for Orioles fans. But I can offer some solace as the Bronx Bombers rise inexorably to the top. It comes in the form of this spring's crop of baseball books now hitting the shelves.

ATLANTA -- The Atlanta Braves, by virtue of the dominant performance of their pitching staff in the first two games of the 92nd World Series, are proving again what already was evident.The National League is the pitching league and the American League is not, which could mean a string of world championships by NL teams into the next century.The Braves might have enough pitching to win the next three or four by themselves, but if they don't, there are several other National League clubs who are developing great young pitching staffs.

SOMALIA, Bosnia, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin have bee challenged for space on Page 1 this week by a subject of RTC transcendent significance -- baseball.Which is an accomplishment. A leisurely game in a fast-paced age, baseball seems to be losing favor, especially among the young. This is very foolish of the young, for it raises the possibility that they will grow old without baseball. Growing old is bad enough with baseball. Without it, aging would be truly unbearable. Unhappily, the people who are in charge of the solution are the ones who caused the problem, the owners of the ball clubs, who want us to think they are stewards of a national treasure instead of ordinary entrepreneurs.

Putting aside spiritual sports (I think of mountaineering and fly-fishing), no game has inspired literature as have baseball and boxing. Once as a young man, I spent an evening in Madison Square Garden with A.J. Liebling, a hero of mine, and a few other ecstatic boxing enthusiasts. But even in their company, the grace of pugilism still eluded me.Baseball is a different story.Why? Because it endures immortally as the most civilized and most intelligent of all the sports contrived by humankind.

Washington -- This summer, as his health care reform plan struggles and critics have come out of the woodwork, President Clinton and his aides have concluded that there is something new, and qualitatively different, about the way this president is being bashed."

Here comes the windup and what a -- um, change of pitch. OK, now he's ready. Oops, well, he didn't like that signal, either. Now the catcher and the pitcher will have a little talk. The catcher walks slowly back to the plate. Here goes the windup and what a -- throw to the first baseman.Now the catcher will join the pitcher on the mound and he's followed by the first baseman and here comes the manager out '' of the dugout. And it looks like there will be a pitching change. Stay tuned, we'll return after this commercial break.

BARCELONA, Spain -- Oh well, there is always 1996.Maybe by then, the United States will have a new system for selecting an Olympic baseball team.And the Cubans will be old, the Japanese will have moved on to their professional league and the Taiwan players will have become potbellied coaches for Little League World Series contenders.The United States failed to win a medal in its national pastime yesterday, losing to Japan, 8-3, in the bronze-medal game of the 1992 Summer Games.The United States was expected to challenge Cuba and Japan for the gold, but the Americans never came close.

In poker's old days -- that's about three years ago -- much of what many people understood about the game they learned from a Kenny Rogers song. You had to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away. Right? Well, the lyrical advice in that poignant old ballad was basically on target, but today a whole lot of folks are serious about figuring out exactly when they should be holdin' and foldin' and walkin'. Some professional players have observed that poker is a game that takes an afternoon to learn and a lifetime to master.