For many in baseball September is a month of stark contrast with April, when everyone had dared to hope. If baseball is a lot like life, as pundits declare, it is because life is more about losing than winning.

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

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

Why we play as children is not because it is our work or because it is how we learn, though both statements are true; we play because we are wired for joy, it is imperative as human beings.

Life is more about losing than winning.

Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.

This was nostalgia in the literal Greek sense: the pain of not being able to return to one's home and family.