The first rule of child psychology is that it applies throughout all of life.

A few months after this resolution, I read an article in the New Yorker that made me intensely happy to be argument-free. Its premise, based on the work of political scientists, was that the worst thing a president can do to advance his positions is to state them; as soon as he does, a huge number of people will position themselves in opposition,

But sabermetric orthodoxy, based on complex run-scoring simulations, says that the number-two batter—who makes almost as many plate appearances as the leadoff man, but bats with more runners on base—should be the club’s best hitter, instead of the high-contact, good-bat-control, move-the-runners-over type that teams have been sticking there since

We learn two things: Baseball is really hard, and Ben and I might be smart.

“The last few games I’ve been getting a few more high fives in the dugout, people starting to talk a little more. You gotta earn it. It’s not given. Everything is earned.”

Dale Carnegie was way ahead of me: “If you tell them they are wrong,” he wrote, “do you make them want to agree with you? Never! For you have struck a direct blow at their intelligence, judgment, pride and self-respect. That will make them want to strike back. But it will never make them want to change their minds. If you are going to prove

Yet the Barry Bonds of the Pacific Association was considered a borderline candidate for high-A, which is three levels below the big leagues. Baseball is hard.

There’s a relatively new cliché about failure in baseball that I like a lot more: The other guy lives in a big house, too. Not all failure corresponds to a lack of effort. Or a lack of desire. Or a lack of preparation. Or a lack of skill. We lose, sometimes, because the other guy is also really good.

Some aspects of Sean’s baseball background are the same as every other professional player’s. He remembers swinging one of those short plastic bats with the big barrels when he was barely old enough to stand, and he grew up going to his father’s rec-league softball games. By the time Jack Conroy stopped playing, Sean was old enough to start, and