Cynicism is the only form in which common souls come closest to honesty.

As one who is accused (unfairly?) from time to time of being a classic cynic, and as one who feels thus compelled to pour forth on the fine distinctions between cynicism, skepticism and the stepsibling, realism, I offer this thin slice of the real:

For 45 minutes the other night, and in the close proximity of perhaps the least pleasing technological progression of this or any time, television, believe it or not... I was happy.

Although it gives a secret twinge of regret to devote our latest foray to sports, nonetheless let the space record that there is something about baseball which threatens to cause a re-investment of interest. Put away childish things when it is time and all that. But there is something about baseball which causes me to laugh quietly at the other sports, not necessarily in derision but certainly with a sort of self-satisfaction.

It is not that I don’t admire the physical politics emanating from the women’s soccer phenomenon—spectacle, after all, is like newly spilled blood and the sharklike American public is nothing if not a dull-eyed sea cruiser with a voracious appetite. But it is so terribly ephemeral, and as its illusory moment spends momentum furiously and begins to wind down, I caution against being too flabbergasted when tuning in six weeks down the media road to discover neither hide nor hair of the whole spasmodic revolution. When the "you go girl" will have come and gone from the insatiable screen of mercurial high hyperbole, there will be something else left.

For the many who complain that baseball is not fast enough or that it is not glamorous enough—and their number does indeed include rather prominently those who seek to market the game as a commodity—there are also some who shake their heads knowingly, fold their newspapers into that agreeable section the size of a library book, and then hunker down to wade into the ritual significance of the box score.

I have become adept at following the game without benefit of the electronic media, however I know that the language of the box scores can seem by turns obscure, distant and arcane to the uninitiated. Maybe that gives me a charge. To be different is divine. An entire space someday to the box score and it’s timeless lore.

But now, to 45 minutes when all was proper (that is to say, bearable) with the world and cynicism was but a word easier to say then spell, especially on a confounded keyboard.

Ted Williams is 80 years old. And he has recently been ill, thus does not walk too well. He positively dotters, if the truth must be relinquished. And yet the sight of this patron saint of the game, being supported at his side by the modern poor man’s version of the Splendid Splinter, portly hitting machine Tony Gwynn, was just one of the magic moments which buoyed the 79^th All-Star Game this year. The scene transcended beyond the nearly mindless animal instincts of basketball, boxing and football to a rare air of detail and dignity that recalls yesteryear which is fast becoming buried under athletic spectacles of speed, power and libido. Not that I do not have a lifetime crush on football—being a Texan as fine luck would have it, this is a welcome birthright—and not that I do not find the running and jumping through hoops of the hardwood stimulating in a manner. And not that there isn’t something deeply disturbing and sensual (and therefore, terrifying and satisfying) about pugilism, the oldest sport just as prostitution is the most ancient of professions.

But, baseball speaks. It doesn’t bellow or gasp, or berate or exclaim. It speaks. Slowly, sweetly, with grace, it speaks. It is calm and the rest are Other. It is class and the rest are... sports.

Ted Williams circled the field, driven in a golf cart, and the collection of baseball’s best, past and present, lined the perfectly symmetric green field of a ballpark built in 1912, when the modern world was young, the Titanic was majestically and temporarily afloat and the Balkans remained unbalkanized, more or less, as powderkegs are measured with a narrow eye.

The past stars looked on, as in the presence of royalty one must avert the gaze ever so slightly while fighting the urge to gawk. Does anyone see me seeing? There are stars. And then, STARS. Bob Feller must have shuddered slightly, for even though he exploded upon the scene as a 17-year old Iowa fireballer with no fear of any man, he had to remember how impossible was the task of trying to make Ted Williams an out in the scorebook. Warren Spahn, ineffable, tiny with wear but probably still good for six innings of craft, had to have been grateful that the Red Sox of Williams, Pesky and Doerr had been forever a staple of the American League and not the senior circuit where the classy left-hander made his bones for 20 years or more.

And the young players, I watched them as they gathered around the enfeebled champion like Little Leaguers around the local hero of an another era. I watched an old-fashioned grainy newsreel, all black and white, I swear, an astounding anachronism in a time where realism is king and so-called "Reality TV" with its misplaced guts is the big seller. The looks on the faces caused a chain reaction on my face, too. And I was happy.

Happy with the history and the depth, the substance and the interweaving of the best of our popular culture with the fabric of who we were, are and hope to have a chance to become. There is hope in baseball, tradition and honor to the extent that the dinosaur still roams the subconscious terrain of those who would bend in awe and respect of it.

So, despite the Fox network, with its cacophonous overkill of visual orgy, loud music and bush league and perversely controversial amateur announcers—save for Tim McCarver, who is passable—I decided not to pout over the absence of Bob Costas. Sigh.

Despite the shameless automobile car giveaways (on national TV?) and the awful movie advertisements (tell me you caught the one for Dragonheart, and please do not tell me if you were fooled by yet another Braveheart rip-off) and despite the fact that the hometown hero, carrot-nosed young Nomar Garciaparra (sounds like a fictitious name, and I wish I had coined it) eased past New York’s Derek Jeter in something called "On-line Balloting" for a starting position...despite all this cheese which as an aggregate forms one of the reasons I spend more time criticizing television than watching it, I was happy with the first 45 minutes of the All-Star Game.

Because Ted Williams, who ain’t long for this world, got to do something he never had the maturity level (they say) to do once upon a time, when he was the toast of the town and yet refused to acknowledge it. Almost as if his ornery thorniness toward the Red Sox fans was a carryover from his icy, combative hitting demeanor. Don’t give an inch, thought the poor boy from San Diego who grew up with a chip next to the bat on his shoulder.

But on this night, when the stars were out and the galaxy of leisure and sport and dreams and reality seemed small and captive, Ted Williams toured the land in a golf cart. The returning hero tipped his cap, again and again. The vast share of fans he once spit at and disdained are dead, gone or both, and still maybe a few had shuffled into the rickety stands at Fenway Park just for this occasion. They used to root against Williams in a way. They clamored for a trade to bring them the great DiMaggio, so that he could take aim at the short, high porch in left field and rid them of the surly, angry Kid who cursed sportswriters and fans (and himself) alike. But he was too good, and he hit .400 in a season, he had big balls and he hit a home run in his last plate appearance and then said, screw you and went away to fish for the rest of it. But he must have wanted this moment. Ted Williams was a cynic, as many are. He took the adulation and left it, mainly, but today was a day for miracles, full circles and change, redemption, all against a backdrop of consistency. Baseball, stoic and strong, welcomes back the prodigal son, the numeral 9 still stitched across his jersey in our collective memory.

Surely he must have allowed himself to dream of this moment since leaving town in 1960...

And finally, it came.

His youthful indiscretions seemed to float away, high and away over the Green Monster and you can come home again, and you might just be able to erase the memories for an instant, start anew and show that to have lived one’s life gleefully (secretly, he) playing a boy’s game for a man’s salary, was a treat not left unnoticed and unappreciated. Well...there you have it. Down cynicism, for one night. Just the beginnings of a ramble which would take us into next Tuesday, where none of us would be so fresh and polite about an overstayed welcome.

And so, Nietzsche spent the final 11 years of his life paralyzed with insanity. His greatness was overexposed on the dark side and he forever will be remembered (somewhat) erroneously by most laypeople as the one who presaged the ‘60s fave, "God is dead."

But he was vital, rich and visionary, as is baseball, and I bet you never figured to find them both in the same essay, much less the same sentence.