“Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.”

— Wilfrid Sheed

"Why Can't the Movies Play Ball?," The New York Times (1989-05-14)

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Wilfrid Sheed50

English-American novelist and essayist 1930–2011

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“A constellation of the most pedantic, obstinate ignorance and presumption, mixed with a kind of rustic incivility, which would try the patience of Job.”

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“The intellectual world is divided into two classes — dilettantes, on the one hand, and pedants, on the other.”

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“I think the fans in Pittsburgh are the best in baseball. They've always been on my side, even when I'm going bad. I've made plenty of friends and I would not trade these people for anybody, anywhere.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

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“The danger is that we shall become a nation of pedants. I use the word literally and democratically to refer to the millions of people who are moved by a certain kind of passion in their pastimes as well as in their vocations. In both parts of their lives this passion comes out in shoptalk. I have in mind both the bird watchers and nature lovers: the young people who collect records and follow the lives of pop singers and movie stars; I mean the sort of knowledge possessed by “buffs” and “fans” of all species—the baseball addicts and opera goers, the devotees of railroad trains and the collectors of objects, from first editions to netsuke.
They are pedants not just because they know and recite an enormous quantity of facts—if a school required them to learn as much they would scream against tyranny. It is not the extent of their information that appalls; it is the absence of any reflection upon it, any sense of relation between it and them and the world. Nothing is brought in from outside for contrast or comparison; no perspective is gained from the top of their monstrous factual pile; no generalities emerge to lighten the sameness of their endeavor.”

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“I dedicate this hit to the fans in Pittsburgh. They have been wonderful. And to the people back in Puerto Rico, but especially to the fellow who pushed me to play baseball, Roberto Marin. He made me play. He carried me around looking for the man to sign me. […] I dedicate that hit to the person I owe most to in professional baseball, Roberto Marin.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

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“I didn't care about the statistics in anything else. I didn't, and don't pay any attention to the statistics of the stock market, the weather, the crime rate, the gross national product, the circulation of magazines, the ebb and flow of literacy among football fans and how many people are going to starve to death before the year 2050 if I don't start adopting them for $3.69 a month; just baseball. Now why is that? It is because baseball statistics, unlike the statistics in any other area, have acquired the powers of language.”

Bill James (1949) American baseball writer and statistician

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“Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.”

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Wilfrid Sheed50

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