Fans

The non-fan would say that baseball is a slow game. The fan would say that baseball is a precise game. The non-fari would say that baseball is boring. The fan would say that baseball is subtle. Undeniably, there are lulls in the action: between pitches, between batters, between innings. Baseball is a game filled with spare time. So what do you do? You look around. Baseball fans, more than any others, look at each other.

Photographer Gary Bishop is not a baseball fan. “I don’t have anything against baseball,” he says.

“But I’ve never liked crowds of people, and I’ve particularly never liked crowds of people hav- fun.” But Gary became fascinated by the aces at Arlington Stadium. When he came back from the ballpark, he was smiling.

He was smiling, perhaps, because he was reassured. Dallas-Fort Worth has been scornfully accused of stultifying homogeneity. “The Metro-plex,” in the impersonal, technocratic tone of its very name, is a tag that says bland uniformity.

Arlingto Stadium says it isn’t so.