Geez, over the last 12 months we've lost Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, Robert Hughes and now Jacques Barzun. Not mention Eugene Genovese, Alexander Cockburn, Nora Ephron, David Rakoff, Hilton Kramer and Ray Bradbury.

Barzun was interviewed during the 1994-95 strike, and confessed he no longer followed baseball.

The Chicago Cubs did win the World Series when he was 11 months old.

And Eric Hobsbaw.

Eric Hobsbawm and Barry Commoner died within 24 hours of each other, each at the age of 95.

Hard to overstate Barzun's influence on the field of history.

“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game and do it by watching first some high-school or small-town teams”

Sorry, but that's one of the most misquoted sentences of all time. What Barzun really said was

"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn professional wrestling, the spectacle, the marketing, and the reality of the sport.

"Rules? They're irrelevant."

“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”

That's why I know his name. It's been bugging me.

I wonder if he ever stopped reading mystery-detection fiction. Barzun and co-author Wendell Hertig Taylor wrote a unique book:

A Catalogue of Crime

I wonder if he got to read Bill James's book on crime. Given his age and physical decline, probably not. It would also be interesting to know if James in his formative years read the section in A Catalogue of Crime on true crime cases and studies.

He's one of the few eminent authors that I wrote to (in the pre-internet era). I once read a lot of mystery-detection and wrote to tell how much I like his book, how invaluable it was in my reading. I also chastised him for the treatment of John Dickson Carr in the book.

I was surprised when he wrote back, dated February 3, 1983:

Thank you for your kind note. You'll be glad to know that A Catalogue of Crime is being brought up to date right now--upwards of 1500 new titles and additional information about authors and works already included in the first edition.

Alas for John Dickson Carr--he doesn't look to us as he does to you!

Granted, he took the opportunity to promote the new revised edition of the work, but he aslo obviously had read my missive.

Sadly, it would be hard to argue against the notion that one gets a better idea of the heart and mind of America today by understanding football. Empire and fascism are better understood from the gridiron than a park.