Baseball for Lit Nerds. Or Lit for Baseball Nerds. Whatever.

William Faulkner, as channeled by Dave Fleming, on John Olerud:

“Whose father grew up on meals of lutefish caught in the cold waters of the Dakotas, caught with lines dropped through holes cut in ice to the world dark below and still. Who suffered in youth moments of blinding pain in his head and underwent the surgeon’s knife and passed through like Achilles held by his mother over the pool of immortal water and marked by a circle of raised and softened flesh that he would cover with a plastic helmet all his days on the field. Who would have a summer of hitting over .400 in which the name Ted Williams echoed in the cold dome that held within it the team called Blue Jays. Whose fate was to be to be perpetually underappreciated, surrounded as he was by other players who hit the ball farther, on more occasions. Would carry always the realization that the smaller inconveniences in life pale to the possibilities of its ceasing.”

This is what English degrees were designed for.

Click through for the whole piece over at Bill James Online.

(via Baseball Nation)