Things fall apart . . . the center cannot hold, as Yeats proclaimed in 1917. And since that slippage began, most things we cherish have gone still farther south, fast. Yet certain moments abide, certain foolish passions continue to nourish and animate. Perhaps, even at this moment, it still is the bottom of the ninth, runners on second and third, 2 and 0 on the batter, and the pitch is loosed. . . . All is open, it seems, still; the game is on, now; the game is on, and we are in it.
