"A few years ago, as was mentioned, I wrote a book on baseball. One of my subjects now works here in St. Louis, Tony La Russa, the manager of the Cardinals. I may say parenthetically that Tony is here in the quadrangle this morning - if any of you can pitch, please see him before tonight's game.

"From Tony La Russa, I have learned that there is only one way for a team to win consistently over 162 games. It is all very well to have some prodigies of nature like Mark McGwire, who can hit the ball into another Zip Code. But Mark McGwires are rare and even they, like all ball players, fail more often than not. Remember that the best hitter in baseball this year will fail 65 percent of the time. So the only way to win consistently is by doing the little things, obeying the little rules of baseball, such as . . . with a runner on second and no outs, try to hit behind the runner . . . .

"However, as I speak here in St. Louis, just a medium-length Mark McGwire fly ball from where the Cardinals play, I want to dispense one more dollop of advice. It is, take care of your children. In particular, do not let your children make momentous decisions at too young an age - I speak from bitter experience.

"I grew up in Champaign, Ill., midway between Chicago and St. Louis. At an age too tender for life-shaping decisions, I made one. While all my friends were becoming Cardinals fans, I became a Cub fan. My friends, happily rooting for Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst and other great Redbirds, grew up cheerfully convinced that the world is a benign place, so of course, they became liberals. Rooting for the Cubs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I became gloomy, pessimistic, morose, dyspeptic and conservative. It helped out of course that the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908, which is two years before Mark Twain and Tolstoy died. But that means, class of 1998, that the Cubs are in the 89th year of their rebuilding effort, and remember, any team can have a bad moment. So fellow members of the Class of 1998, my last piece of advice is - Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Cub fans."

Background on George Will: An avid baseball fan, Will is one of the nation's leading political commentators and essayists and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 10 books. His widely acclaimed newspaper column, syndicated by the Washington Post since 1974, now appears twice weekly in nearly 500 newspapers in the United States and Europe. Will is often mentioned as a potential next commissioner of Major League Baseball. His own baseball career began in the sandlots of Champaign and culminated in 1992, with his induction into the Little League Baseball Museum Hall of Excellence. His 1990 book, "Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball," rose to No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list and earned praise as one of the decade's best "nuts and bolts" books on baseball. A collection of his new and previously published writings on baseball was published this month under the title "Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose and Other Reflections on Baseball." He credits baseball with shaping many of his core beliefs, including respect for hard work, fair play, and in fact, his unique brand of conservatism.