I'm reading Lords of the Realm, The Real History of Baseball, by John Helyar, and in the introduction he talks about growing up with baseball in his life and mentions that baseball has given him "some of life's best moments ... and its worst (the impossible agony of the ball going through Buckners legs)."

When I read that I was taken by his thrifty and evocative wording, "the impossible agony."  It got me thinking about how awful that must have felt for them, and that I might know what it was like because that's how I/we all felt last year after Beltran's strike-out (among other moments over the years), only for them it was possibly much worse because they were even closer to winning it all, and after so much more agony and time gone by without a world championship.

And then there are all of the other teams, the ones who finish last, or blow it in their own fancy, dramatic way, and how only one team wins it all anyway, and it all just brought back for me the fact that although the point IS winning, there is another point too, equally important, if not more so, that I'm just happy to have the game and my team, whether we take it all or not.

Woooo, heavy, right?  And yeah, kind of cliche... oh, and sappy, can't forget sappy... well, anyway...

Let's go Mets!