Iannone: You have said, I am told, that to understand America we need to understand baseball. Please explain. And would therefore the changes we have seen both in baseball and in the sports world at large (so many sports coming onto the scene, including European soccer) carry any implications for the state of the national character?

Barzun: Ah, the great baseball question! I thought the game specially American and admirable, because it is the most complex sport and the least physical. It doesn’t depend on butting and bashing. It calls for lightning judgment and response at every moment of play, together with accuracy of eye and power of arm and leg for hitting, running, and throwing. And it is a wonderfully cooperative game in which the continually changing conditions bring on a variety of rules and opportunities.

Those features seemed to me, when I made the statement in 1954, to mirror the character of our individual behavior, our social and business relations, and our sense of organization generally. We have fallen away from this standard to an appalling degree—we blunder repeatedly, “the honest mistake” regularly accounts for the predictable error. We utter stupidly offensive words, followed by apologies. Our legislatures dither and act too late. Industry and corporations are outsourcing because it’s more fun for CEOs to buy and sell companies than run them. It’s only a matter of time till baseball bats are stamped “Made in China.” Anyhow, allegiance to a team is no longer possible; the free-player system scrambles the lot, and the salaries paid introduce an element of disgust in what used to be the joy of being a fan.

(Jacques Barzun, “A Conversation with Jacques Barzun,” interview by Carol Iannone, Academic Questions 19 [fall 2006]: 19-27, at 26-7)