In over 160 years of recorded baseball history, no team had ever won a championship this way.

Planning to play: that's what saving for retirement is today - and it is antithetical to the nature of play, fully within the definition of work, and blissfully ignorant of the reality of death.

We play because we are wired for joy; it is imperative as human beings.

In over 160 years of recorded baseball history, no team had ever won a championship this way.

I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.

And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability by 'running the game like a business.'

Do we settle on a regional team because we can go to its ballpark and see its games on television? Or do we choose a team as our favorite because it has an especially appealing player, a Barry Bonds or an Ichiro?