Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.

 

Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
--
"Why Can't the Movies Play Ball?," The New York Times (1989-05-14)

 

Wilfrid Sheed

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This gathering of baseball's brightest stars will be an outstanding platform to grow the game internationally. As baseball continues to grow globally, more and more fans around the world have the opportunity to appreciate the grace and excitement of our great game. The first World Baseball Classic will bring a unique blend of enthusiasm to old and new fans alike.

 

Bud Selig

 

The danger is that we shall become a nation of pedants. I use the word literally and democratically to refer to the millions of people who are moved by a certain kind of passion in their pastimes as well as in their vocations. In both parts of their lives this passion comes out in shoptalk. I have in mind both the bird watchers and nature lovers: the young people who collect records and follow the lives of pop singers and movie stars; I mean the sort of knowledge possessed by “buffs” and “fans” of all species—the baseball addicts and opera goers, the devotees of railroad trains and the collectors of objects, from first editions to netsuke.
They are pedants not just because they know and recite an enormous quantity of facts—if a school required them to learn as much they would scream against tyranny. It is not the extent of their information that appalls; it is the absence of any reflection upon it, any sense of relation between it and them and the world. Nothing is brought in from outside for contrast or comparison; no perspective is gained from the top of their monstrous factual pile; no generalities emerge to lighten the sameness of their endeavor.

 

Jacques Barzun

 

"As the voice of the Dodgers for over 40 years, Vin Scully is recognized as one of the truly great baseball announcers. To baseball fans, including the original Brooklyn Dodgers diehards, Vin is beloved as much as the game of baseball itself.

 

Vin Scully

 

The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with at stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum. (The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway.)

 

Stephen Jay Gould

 

I didn't care about the statistics in anything else. I didn't, and don't pay any attention to the statistics of the stock market, the weather, the crime rate, the gross national product, the circulation of magazines, the ebb and flow of literacy among football fans and how many people are going to starve to death before the year 2050 if I don't start adopting them for $3.69 a month; just baseball. Now why is that? It is because baseball statistics, unlike the statistics in any other area, have acquired the powers of language.

 

Bill James