Too smart for me

I often wonder why some of our most intellectual writers would want to do baseball. Perhaps, as Star Trek‘s Mr. Spock said in the episode “Shore Leave” (Geek alert!), “The more complex the mind, the greater the need for play.”

So when a George Will or a Tom Olpihant or a Doris Kearns Goodwin starts waxing on the national pastime, it makes me think, what do their fellow pundits think about this? Well, asked and answered, as Elliott Negin, the director of news & commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists, published “George Will Strikes Out on a (Climate) Change Up” on the Huffington Post.

George Will pays a lot of attention to baseball statistics. He’s a rabid Cubs fan, and he’s written two books on the game, including the 1990 best-seller Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball.

Unfortunately the nationally syndicated columnist doesn’t show nearly the same interest in climate data. He’s obviously a numbers guy, but when it comes to global warming, Will strikes out every time.

Will was opining on both topics last Sunday on ABC’s This Week Sunday morning gabfest (video below), where he is a regular guest. Host Terry Moran wrapped up the show by turning it over to Will for his perspective on Major League Baseball at mid-season, just before the annual All-Star Game.

You can read the entire essay here.

Incidentally, Oliphant, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, wrote Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family’s Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers; I did this interview with him in 2005 for Bookreporter.com.

Goodwin published Wait Till Next Year – A Memoir in 1997.

Tagged as: Doris Kearns Goodwin, George Will, Thomas Oliphant