Word: roles
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Fans, too, are being urged to plug up. Perhaps the best role model is Alexa Ray, the 2 1/2-year-old daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, who flaunts ear protectors at Dad's shows. The ultimate solution, of course, is simply to turn the volume down. Heresy? Perhaps. Better hearing? For sure...
Many sports fans believe the Pooh-Bahs of professional athletics -- the commissioners, presidents, team owners, the whole briefcase brigade -- should play a role similar to background music at the movies. They are doing their jobs most successfully when no one notices them at all. By this standard, A. Bartlett Giamatti, the twelfth president of the National League and, as of next April Fools' Day, the seventh commissioner of major league baseball, has had a rocky summer...
...concerns extend well beyond these. He is convinced that major league baseball plays a bardic, mythic role in American society; the long, recurring seasons are an ongoing epic, Homeric or Vergilian or Dantesque, a vital locus of rapt assembly where enduring values are enacted and passed on. "The game is such a wonderful mix between the individual and the community," he says. "The struggle between the pitcher and batter throws these two isolated competitors into lonely relief. But the purpose of that confrontation is for the team, the benefit of the larger group...
Giamatti's role in this unfolding, inevitable crisis will be under the closest imaginable scrutiny. Some mutters from the Players Association have already accused Bart of being the owners' apologist. Giamatti is in no mood to criticize the people who hired him. "I've gotten to know all the owners, and I think they are a remarkable set of human beings." He also resists charges of partisanship: "I'm not anti-players, anti-umpires, anti-anybody." He elaborates: "My responsibility will be to serve, as best I can, the totality of the institution...
Princeton's alumni gave about $1 million less than expected, in part because of last October's stock market crash, Spies said. But while he said that the crash certainly had played a major role in causing the university's deficit, he was not sure what effects the crash had on the budget...