As pitchers and catchers report in Arizona and Florida, a uniquely American season begins anew. The beauty of the sport of baseball has never been more poetically elegized than by former commissioner Bart Giamatti (you may know his son, Paul) in this essay, “The Green Fields of the Mind.” Play ball!

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.