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Baseball and the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments

On my evening commute, while reading ?Teach Like Your Hair?s On Fire? by Rafe Esquith, another part of my brain was trying to piece together a germ of an idea I have for this year?s Constitution Day?. I then read this in Rafe Esquith?s book:

?To me, baseball is the perfect game. It?s the only game in which the defense holds the ball. It?s the fairest of all sports: One team cannot use the clock to prevent the other team from catching up, and even when you are winning, you have to give your opponent a chance to even the score. With its lineup and batting order, baseball is more democratic than other sports: Each player gets a turn, and a team can?t keep feeding the ball to its best players. It is a game that has moments of stillness and sudden flashes of speed. To a causal observer, not much appears to be happening during a game. But a knowledgeable fan understands the game?s intricate nuances, from the positioning of the defense to the batter?s count.? (?Teach Like Your Hair?s On Fire? by Rafe Esquith, Viking Penguin, 2007, page 126. See also the Hobart Shakespeareans.)

If that?s not the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments rolled into a description of a beautiful and (mostly) honorable game, I don?t know what is. Maybe we should have a Constitution Team play baseball on Constitution Day ....hmmmm.

Full post as published by Oregon Legal Research on April 16, 2008 (boomark / email).