If we build it....

• Author: Frost, John W., II
• Position: Legal etiquette

"When the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game."

--Grantland Rice

As February turns into March, I will begin dreaming of baseball; this is the time of year when I start looking toward spring games. Baseball has always been a part of my life, and I believe the legal profession can learn from the sport's trials and tribulations. Baseball, I believe, has some compelling similarities to the law.

Unlike football and basketball, baseball assures each side equal time. No contender in baseball can sit on a lead, waiting for time to expire. Each side must have its turn, just as advocates are assured their turn in court. Baseball is not a game where "might makes right"; it's a game that offers an equal chance based on skill and talent, not "bulk or height," as Margaret G. Robb has written in the Indiana State Bar Association journal. Robb sees the same equal chance in baseball that is guaranteed by a court system in which "a Gideon, Miranda, and Brown has as much standing" as a Clinton or a Prudential.

"When it comes to honoring the past," Robb says, "what other game is so devoted to prior performance and statistical comparison for precedent? Where else are current practitioners held so scrupulously to the standards of those who went before? Where else does the written record count for so much?" This Indiana lawyer's affection and reverence, for both baseball and the law, come through clearly in her column. Another similarity she sees in the two American institutions is the fact that "both baseball players and lawyers learn early on that they won't survive undefeated and must be judged on how they played, in victory or defeat. Dealing with loss with grace and dignity is part of the game," she says.

The parallels are appealing to me, a lifelong baseball fan, but there is an even greater lesson to be learned from this sport than just the similarities mentioned. I have a close friend who was just as faithful a fan as I have always been--until the baseball strike of 1994. Not even being a Cubs fan for his entire life had dampened my friend's passion for baseball, but a sport he could no longer respect killed his interest in a game he had loved for more than half a century. To this day, he neither looks at nor listens to baseball statistics or news of wins and losses. He is through with baseball. I believe lawyers have a lesson to learn here.

America wants athletes to play for...