It has been nearly a half-century since American film critic Pauline Kael wrote that celebrity in the modern world provided its own raison d’etre. It didn’t matter why you were famous or if you deserved to be famous, she said, but just that you were famous. American Notes: confessional …
New York Notes: Baseball’s Edifice Complex Major league baseball in the USA has been on a binge of new stadium construction. Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards started the craze in 1992 with a deservedly hailed ‘retro’ park that combined the intimacy and sightlines of a baseball-only ballpark with the …
Like most liberal Americans, I have awakened every morning since Election Day rubbing my eyes with disbelief about the outcome. Yet the more I hear the phrase “President- elect Barack Obama” the more I get used to it, and somewhere in the great beyond Wesley Branch Rickey and Jack …
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game—and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.” —Jacques Barzun
