Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.

Conroy likens baseball’s statistical culture to wine tasting: devotees don’t merely use numbers to inform opinions, they savor them for their own sensuous pleasure. The image suggests a kind of connoisseurship—fans “taste” batting averages, ERAs, and streaks the way oenophiles taste terroir and vintage, rolling them around to appreciate nuance and to display discernment. It also hints at baseball’s distinctive relationship to memory and narrative: numbers become a language for storytelling, argument, and nostalgia, turning the sport into an archive where performance can be compared across eras. The line gently teases this obsession while also admiring its richness.