Sunday Night Baseball is a contrivance. It was created for ESPN in 1990 and smacks of football, something we'd all keep out of our beloved pastoral pastime if given the choice…which we as fans rarely are. If we are one of its participants, it screws up our weekend rhythms completely. Wake to a gorgeous Sunday […]

It's no secret that Shea can be a boorish place, full of drunks who've advanced directly to Seriously Antisocial without ever having landed on Amiable or Funny, dimwits who can't find their seats and aren't interested to hear they're in yours, asleep/feckless ushers, catatonic cashiers and people who apparently forked over $18 to $25 to […]

If you brought a newcomer to last night's game and then today's, he or she got a lesson in how two baseball games with more or less similar scores can be pretty different.

Last night's, despite being won by the bad guys, was a gem: intrigue, drama, history, and a touch of wackiness.

Today's, despite being won […]

I don't know why the 43,000-odd who accompanied Greg and me to Shea tonight were booing Chase Utley like he was A-Rod; I really don't. I have nothing against Chase Utley — hell, I wish he were one of ours. (Granted, approximately since Alfonzo left town I've had a habit of coveting other teams' second […]

On the same trip when we buried now and forever The Curse of Turner Field, have we discovered we are subject to a new kind of locale-based dysfunction?

Things don't go as well as they could at the big sack of Soilmaster. Pedro outdistanced by Dontrelle despite pitching brilliantly? That in and of itself ain't nothin' […]

The problem with being one of those bloggers who blogs virtually every day is when you take a little trip and decide you're not going to blog that you still think like a blogger. You hear stuff, you see stuff and it is your impulse to post stuff. But you don't 'cause you can't or […]

Baseball, man — it'll kill ya.

Good luck teasing the storylines out of this one. First we pounded poor Ricky Nolasco, who must be seeing orange and blue ghosts in his sleep. Then — and it feels like we've done this too often — we went to sleep at the switch. 6-0 became 6-1 became 6-2 […]

One of my many little rituals is to wave my hand around during save opportunities to show how many outs there are, as if I'm an extra infielder signalling to the outfield. (I even use the index finger and the pinkie on two outs, I've taught Joshua to do the same, and I've explained to […]