A game of great charm in the adoption of mathematical measurements to the timing of human movements, the exactitudes and adjustments of physical ability to hazardous chance. The speed of the legs, the dexterity of the body, the grace of the swing, the elusiveness of the slide — these are the features that make Americans everywhere forget the last syllable of a man's last name or the pigmentation of his skin.

Rickey is praising baseball as a uniquely “measurable” drama: human motion (running, swinging, sliding) is subjected to numbers, timing, and fine physical calibration, yet always unsettled by chance (bad hops, wind, errors). In that blend of precision and unpredictability he locates the sport’s democratic pull. The closing claim—that spectators forget both ethnic markers (“the last syllable of a man’s last name”) and race (“pigmentation of his skin”)—frames baseball as a meritocratic stage where performance can override prejudice. Read in light of Rickey’s public role in integrating Major League Baseball, the passage functions as an argument that athletic excellence can force a widening of social recognition, even if that ideal is aspirational rather than automatic.