Blow Out the Candles May 4

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, author and baseball fan George Will is 70 today.

George is a diehard Cubs fans and has written two books about baseball:

From my library:

1990

1998

"All I remember about my wedding day in 1967 is that the Cubs lost a double-header."

"Baseball is a habit. The slowly rising crescendo of each game, the rhythm of the long season--these are the essentials and they are remarkably unchanged over nearly a century and a half. Of how many American institutions can that be said?"

"In a nation committed to better living through chemistry — where Viagra-enabled men pursue silicone-contoured women — the national pastime has a problem of illicit chemical enhancement. Steroids threaten the health of the 5 percent to 7 percent of players proved, by a mild regime of scheduled tests, to be using them. Steroids also endanger emulative young people. Further, steroids subvert what baseball is selling — fair competition. And they strike at the pleasure of engagement with America's team sport with the longest history." Source: The state of baseball on opening day (Townhall.com, 04/04/2004)