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.

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.

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.

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.

Distant replay morphs into instant replay, and future replay cannot be far off.

Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling - baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail.

Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.