From the Economist INTELLIGENT LIFE

Baseball is the best sport 偉哉，棒球！ Much of the appeal 魅力 of sport lies in pushing the limits of our physical capability 挑戰體能極限. Disciplines like track and field 田徑 or weightlifting 舉重 isolate specific skills 隔離某些特殊技能, whereas complex team sports require a broader mix of athletic gifts 融合更多元的體能天賦. But they both make the spectator who could never hope to run so fast or leap so high marvel at 令人驚訝於 what other members of the same species can achieve 身為人類(目睹)其他同類能夠成就的(體能表現). The allure of baseball is precisely the opposite. It encapsulates 集…於一身 the bulk of life’s experiences rather than showcasing the extremes. Strength and speed come in handy 遲早會用到, to be sure. But they are modest advantages rather than essentials, making the game supremely egalitarian 超 級平等. If you are male, no matter what you look like, there has been a star baseball player who looks like you, from 140lb “Wee” Willie Keeler to the

gluttonous Babe Ruth. All it takes is a little hand-eye co-ordination 手眼協調 度 and a heck of 爆多/許多 a lot of practice. Most other professional sports consist of a series of high-profile signature events 一連串聲勢轟動且高調的活動 spaced out anywhere from every few days to every few months. But baseball’s regular season reflects the daily grind of a modern routine 每天例行性的苦差: it runs to 162 games. Baseball’s finest hitters 最棒的打擊手 fail to reach base six times out of ten, and its fielders 外野手 are pilloried 被公然嘲笑 if they make an error even 3% of the time. Unlike most team sports, it is broken up into discrete individual actions 大家都得各司其職，每個人有自己要扮演的角色，所從事的都是分隔出 來/不連接的工作—no teammate can help you throw, hit or catch the ball. It was said that the famous hitter Ted Williams personified late-season games "when the only thing at stake 唯一的風險 is the tissue-thin 非常細微的 difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless 不懈怠的/持續進行的 and gradual averaging-out 以達到平均數為結果. 最後一句話的意思式，棒球的賽期很長， 慢慢磨慢慢耗，直到勝利者出現為止。 As a uniquely quantifiable sport 可以被量化的運動 with statistics going back more than a century 其統計數字可回溯至超過一百年前, baseball places modern society in the context of history 因此棒球在當代社會中更具有歷史的 意義. Other sports may reflect our hopes and dreams. But only baseball shows how far we need to go to achieve them.其他的運動或許能反映出人們 的夢想與希望，但只有棒球能凸顯成功背後所必需的努力。

Dan Rosenheck is the online Americas editor of The Economist