Amid coronavirus and George Floyd crises, maybe sports can help us unite, again

Something helped hold us together as a nation in 1968. Time and again, it was sports.

The two teams that met in the World Series that season — the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals — had such stars as Al Kaline and Willie Horton, and Curt Flood and Bob Gibson. They not only excelled between the lines but also took major roles in their communities.

Horton grew up in the Detroit Jeffries Projects, only blocks away from where the worst riots since the Civil War had occurred in late...