I’ve been revisiting Ken Burns’ series on the history of baseball, and it sparked some interesting comparisons to a subject that headlines the news daily. Baseball values sportsmanship, fairness, and integrity. Politics far too often involves the polar opposite. While character has once been evident in the halls of Congress (I haven’t figured out which halls, yet), it now seems...

The Date: September 28, 1955 The Place: Yankee Stadium The Event: Dodgers/Yankees, Game 1 of the 1955 World Series Every baseball fan has seen the video. Every baseball fan knows the outcome . . . or do they? I’ll come back to this. For my book, What Do You Stand For?, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns spoke to me about the...

At the end of the month, 30 teams will step out of the dugout to begin another season of Major League Baseball. Thirty rookies are among them. Seventy-six years ago, a rookie stepped out of the dugout and into history. His name was Jack Roosevelt Robinson. In a conversation for my book, What Do You Stand For? documentarian Ken Burns...