I give you Shakespeare; I give you Byron and Jane Austen; I give you Juvenal; and what does everyone email in about? Baseball.

(George Will once observed that he had written a shelf of books about politics and one book about baseball; and his royalty statements told him where America’s heart lies.)

Since the darn fool Parade.com website doesn’t seem to know how to archive things properly, I’ve had to fish out the March 15 Parade from among the coffee grounds and potato peelings, and must now hand-type the answer everybody wants. Grrrr.

Q: Why is baseball the only sport in which managers wear uniforms?
A: In the sport’s early days, managers were often players themselves. Even today, they must still follow rule 1.11(a): “All players on a team shall wear identical uniforms.” Before that 1957 rule, several managers, including the Philadelphia Athletics’ Connie Mack and the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Burt Shotton, wore civilian clothes in the dugout.

While we’re in the sports department, a reader tells me that there was once a gridiron Shakespeare.