Initials/Twenty Questions

Although fealola and mac have already answered margo's question about the meaning of "homered," I just thought I'd bore everyone senseless by quoting from an essay called "Baseball As Narrative" by Bart Giamatti (the former baseball commissioner, who was also a Renaissance scholar and president of Yale). In the essay, Giamatti advances the theory that baseball is essentially a narrative, in which the tale that's being told is about leaving home and seeking to return home safely. In this narrative, "A 'home run' is the definitive kill, the overcoming of obstacle at one stroke, the gratification instantaneous in knowing one has earned a risk-free journey out, around and back." According to Giamatti's theory, baseball is especially appealing to Americans ("a nation of immigrants, all of whom left one home to seek another") because it's "an epic of exile and return, a vast, communal poem about separation, loss, and the hope for reunion."

Aren't you glad you asked?