From Little League infield flies washed down with McDonald’s to Big League homers washed down with the Clear and the Cream, baseball is America's pastime. Days spent downing Cracker Jacks and taking in nine innings at the ballpark are as much a part of our national fabric as apple pie and fireworks.

But the University of Wisconsin doesn't have a baseball team. In fact, it is the only school in the Big Ten that doesn't put its men in the dugout every spring. And while sunbathing on Bascom Hill is certainly an enjoyable expense of time, we can't help but feel that a sizable portion of the student body might embrace an opportunity to munch on hot pretzels and bicker over the finer points of Bucky's pitching rotation.

At the root of UW's failure to field a baseball team is Title IX. While the school has at times maintained that other factors contributed to the demise of the old slugging squad, it does seem plainly apparent that the federal act is the primary barrier between the Badgers and their Big Ten colleagues at this point in time.

And in Title IX, we see an admirable act of Congress entirely appropriate in 1972 and, for the most part, still relevant and necessary today. Indeed, the base of Title IX — a requirement of gender equality in the public educational system — is wholly proper. But the reality of this act extending to athletic scholarships, while a necessary booster to the world of women's college sports in an era when Nixon was still in the White House, borders on anachronistic in today's world and serves only to hamper universities nationwide and keep Wisconsin men from shelling sunflower seeds in the dugout.

Indeed, the time has come for Title IX to be readdressed by Congress and a suitable compromise to be met. It would be a shame for the world of women's college athletics to suffer, and yet we believe that such programs will continue to thrive nearly 35 years after the passage of Title IX without some of the legislation's most restrictive safety nets.

In the interim, we believe UW ought to explore a strategic realignment of athletic scholarships and expenses so as to allow for a baseball team within the claustrophobic barriers of Title IX. The reality is that other schools do afford to host football, men's basketball, men's hockey and baseball. UW need not be the awkward Big Ten school with no right-field fence. A strategic adjustment of scholarships would likely allow for the Badger athletic department to maintain its current roster of programs and add a baseball team. Further spending on women's teams or the outright slashing of existing men's programs is not necessarily a prerequisite to having Bucky dance on the dugouts.

And for Opening Day, we propose a celebration marked by a display of fireworks and free apple pie from Bucky's kitchen.