And watching Ryan pitch now, in his middle age, with all the intensity of youth - the repeated tug at his cap, the reflexive moistening of his pitching fingers by his tongue, the same low, rhythmic windup - one could feel, if not in fact see, his love of the game, his passion for competition, and the notion that, well, why can't this go on forever?
After all, much of the shows and movies they write promote extreme greed, competition and the notion that we have to pull ourselves up from our individual bootstraps NOT that we're all in it together, in solidarity.
It's a merciless, nerve-wracking event that is an exam as well as a competition: Because the notion is to find people who uphold the standards of the profession, the judges select more than one winner.
Its theater held 20,000 spectators and its hippodrome where Herod held Olympic-like competitions and invented the notion of rewarding second and third place sported an obelisk of rose granite.
In the 1970s, the largest enterprises the publicly owned corporations began adopting a notion that even Jack Welch has called "the dumbest idea in the world". In an effort to offset declining performance and profits due to increased competition, these companies embraced the notion that the very purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value as reflected in the current stock price.
They should loosen up, embrace the competition of ideas, reject the notion of "no", understand that everybody on the medal stand should be proud and - in the words of Shaun White, American role model - bring a little "Shake 'n Bake" back to our national political discourse.
"The notion of competition, the acceptance of competition is more in harmony with the American culture than the French and Latin one," he added.
In reality, the scope of mergers and competition makes a mockery of the notion that big firms are locked in fierce competition.
The defense establishment is still dominated by men reared in cold war enmity; the competition for sales has reinforced the notion that America is an unfriendly rival whose success comes at Russia's expense, particularly since NATO has expanded its membership and hence its arms clientele into the former Soviet bastion of Central Europe.
We extend Commons and Fligstein's work on market institutions to define the notion of competition regime as a combination of four market institutions that legitimizes competition strategies.
