“Ask any fan, and she'll tell you there's something satisfyingly linear about baseball: three strikes, three outs. Four bases, nine innings. A lineup, for chrissake-you don't need to be an etymologist to see the meaning in that. But at the same time as that steady progression of three up, three down, then the next, then the next, it's going around and around, cycling through the order, running around the bases. Things get parabolic. There's the arc of up and down through the organization, from Single-A Carolina to the big time in Culver City, the tight arc of an infield-fly out and the majestic one of a game-winning homer.”
Book:The Cactus League