It really comes down to this: if the Palestinian people wanted peace, there would be peace. So long as their goal is some return to a world in which Jews have no political power in the territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, the Jews who have military power in that space are going to resist that. Generations have had their lives ruined by that ideal.

By contrast, most of the territory of historic Poland is in Russia and much of the territory of historic Germany is now Poland. And yet the people appear to have gone on with their lives. The 1948 solution gave the Palestinians more land than the pre-1967 solution and that solution gave them more land than the 2000 solution. The trend is not in their favor. Give peace a chance.

The last two Mariners inside the park jobs were both by Dan Wilson of all people and I saw them both. One was a three-run job and one a grand slam, to boot. In neither case were they illegitimate in the manner described by King, rather they were (no pun intended) Kingdome jobs. They were essentially identical, so much so that when the second occurred I told the person next to me, "this is going to be an inside the park homer". Long fly to deep left center field. Both the left fielder and the center fielder converge on the ball, because it exactly bisects them. Ball hits off the top of the wall as they converge on it, bounces off the wall and slips untouched on the carpet under them, rolling nearly all the way back to the infield. Result, a fairly slow catcher, running full tilt (since when you're Dan Wilson and know you only have warning track power to the gaps, you'd better assume it's not going out) scores. The situation was such that it would have been impossible for either fielder to call the other one off to play the carom, because neither could be sure who had the better shot at the ball. The only way I'd call these illegitimate is because of the effect of the carpet.

As a kid growing up in Detroit, first Michigan State had Jimmy Raye and then Michigan had Dennis Franklin as quarterbacks of very good teams. I believe Franklin was drafted as a wide receiver in the NFL, and I don't know what happened to Raye, but the media basically assumed neither would have a shot at playing quarterback in the NFL. Warren Moon is a few months younger than I am, and although I wasn't living in Seattle then, I remember his UW team and his principled stand that he was a quarterback and nothing else. I also remember his Grey Cup games and how, by the time his CFL days were over, he was a much sought-after commodity by the NFL. Yes, he never won a Super Bowl (have you heard that Ted Williams' teams never won a World Series? also Trent Dilfer did win a Super Bowl, and was immediately cut by the Ravens?), but he did some amazing things as a quarterback, up to a Pro Bowl MVP in his 40's. What's Tim Couch doing these days?

A lot of the letters I've read seem to miss the forest of King's point for the trees. Yes, there are fans of baseball who are not interested in fantasy baseball (or Rotisserie Baseball, which I think now required an R in a circle). And yes, there are fantasy baseball fans who don't go to the ballpark, or even watch games on TV or listen on the radio. Nonetheless, they are part of the nexus of interest in the sport that supports the sport. If they are following Baseball Tonight, or logging into mlb.com, those are eyeballs that are used by MLB to support rights fees or ad rates. They don't need to be turned off the sport by a greed for every last dime, which is basically what the suit was about and what King declared was not worth the candle.

Baseball's never-ending willingness to turn off the real fans, whether it is allowing Fox coverage of the most important games of the season to be bastardized for the alleged benefit of the casual fan, or Bud Selig's constant declarations of doom about the game and its players, to the spectacle of celebrating Rafael Palmeiro's 3000 "hit" when baseball already knew he had flunked a steroid test, is unbelievable to behold. The only comparison I can think of is to the music industry, which will also go out of its way to ensure that people who really care about music are treated like criminals, in many cases literally.