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Sam Smith opens his essay “Time is ripe for baseball to put aside strife” (Tribune, Sept. 22) by quoting from a French author. I think it worth noting, since this is one of the great baseball quotes, that the author was Dr. Jacques (not “Jacque”) Barzun, a French-born essayist and philosopher who taught for many years at Columbia University in New York.
The quote “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball” comes from his book “God’s Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced With a Few Harsh Words,” written in 1954–well before the “almost a century ago” that Smith cites.
