We lost ourselves in whole summers chasing dream and desire: We were Wally Moon, Sandy Koufax, Jim Gilliam, Charlie Neal. That was 35 years ago, and I was foolish enough to believe that youth would never end, and that there would always be the Dodgers. This, I think, is what constitutes myth. It is a way of connecting self to past and place, our way of seeing, not in rational terms, or even by the accumulation of knowledge, but by positive feeling and sentiment . . . I feel a little sorry for our social institutions. The world is changing too fast, and they are ill-equipped to fathom the new requirements of myth. But in this epoch we are being told something new — that far from wishing to bury mystery, the people want to re-engage it. To re-encounter myth, but not in denigration of science. And this is why the spiritual health of baseball is so crucial to us now. Simply put, it is the American institution best suited for creating new and unifying myth.

—Greg Tanaka,
“The Myth of Baseball: Why the National Pastime Has Failed Us,” March 31, 1995

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