The baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown, New York, beside James Fenimore Cooper's Lake Glimmerglass, the football Hall of Fame is in Canton, Ohio, beside the freeway. Baseball means Sping's Here. Football means Winter's Coming. Baseball's record on race relations is poor. But football's is much worse.
Baseball has a drug problem comparable to society's.
Pro football has a range of substance-abuse problems comparable only to itself. And, perhaps, the Hell's Angels'. Baseball enriches language and imagination at almost every point of contact. Without baseball, there'd have been no Fenway Park. Without football, there'd have been no artificial turf.