The Guardian had various intellectuals discussing their guilty pleasures, and Martha Nussbaum cited baseball. I’d argue anything that could inspire the first chapter of Underworld would hardly be a guilty pleasure for intellectuals, but Nussbaum’s comment on fan devotion is quite nice:
Marcus Aurelius said that the first lesson in ethical impartiality was to learn not to be a sports fan, and I have not learned that lesson, nor do I want to learn it. Pondering that apparent contradiction helps me think better about how we can build a world where we support the urgent needs of people everywhere, while still having something improbably wonderful to love.