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

My egotistical concern was less that I would fail to relate to my classmates than that they would know nothing of my uniquely tortured life's course and, thus, me.

As the game enters its glorious final weeks, the chill of fall signals the reality of defeat for all but one team. The fields of play will turn brown and harden, the snow will fall, but in the heart of the fan sprouts a sprig of green.

The heroes of our youth grow old - 'the boys of summer in their ruin,' in Dylan Thomas's verse - yet we seem the same.

One of the first lessons he or she learns is that in baseball anything, absolutely anything, can happen. Just two days ago as I write this, something happened that had never happened in baseball before.

The caliber of play suffered and attendance declined year by year. Interest in college football was exploding, and there was this new game called basketball.

I'd just like to see - in writing about baseball - more energy and better craft, minus statistical bludgeoning and invective.