Sometimes a strikeout means that the sluggers girlfriend just ran off with the UPS driver. Sometimes a muffed ground ball means that the shortstops baby daughter has a pain in her head that wont go away. And handicapping is for amateur golfers, not ballplayers. Pitchers dont ease off on the cleanup hitter because of the lumps just discovered in his wifes breast. Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives were at stake. Perhaps they are. I cherish a theory I once heard propounded by G.Q. Durham that professional baseball is inherently antiwar. The most overlooked cause of war, his theory runs, is that its so damned interesting. It takes hard effort, skill, love and a little luck to make times of peace consistently interesting. About all it takes to make war interesting is a life. The appeal of trying to kill others without being killed yourself, according to Gale, is that it brings suspense, terror, honor, disgrace, rage, tragedy, treachery and occasionally even heroism within range of guys who, in times of peace, might lead lives of unmitigated blandness. But baseball, he says, is one activity that is able to generate suspense and excitement on a national scale, just like war. And baseball can only be played in peace. Hence G.Q.s thesis that pro ball-playerslittle as some of them may want to hear itare basically just a bunch of unusually well-coordinated guys working hard and artfully to prevent wars, by making peace more interesting.