Any day now he will move past Gehrig into 44th place, heading toward the 3,000-hit brotherhood. Against the best pitcher of his era, Greg Maddux, Gwynn's career average is .459. Since 1995 he is hitting .425 with runners in scoring position. There is a paradox in the glittering performances of Gwynn and others. Maddux recently required just 78 pitches for a complete-game victory.
Baseball is unlike politics, education, popular culture and much else.
Baseball is going against the grain of contemporary America by maintaining high quality. Yet some of baseball's owners are suffering a crisis of confidence in their product. They are scrambling for gimmicks to entice customers who, these owners evidently think, cannot be attracted, as fans always have been, by what baseball alone among the professional sports has - more than a century of continuity that enables fans to savor Gwynn's greatness through meaningful comparisons with distant predecessors. These owners are threatening to rip the fabric of this most traditional sport by a stunning miscalculation. Believing this year's novelty of interleague play boosted attendance because of regional rivalries, they propose radical realignment of the teams, obliterating the identities of the National and American Leagues by creating geographic divisions.