NOLA baseball's happy rise and grisly death

Nathaniel Rich on America's national pastime in the Big Easy

In honor of the Fourth of July weekend, it seemed fitting to select an excerpt about the US national pastime from one of my favorite sports essays, an elegy to New Orleans professional baseball. The piece, written by the talented Nathaniel Rich, tells the story of the city’s pro team, the Pelicans—which was built by Alexander Julius Heinemann, the son o…