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.

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.

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.

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.

I think that much of this was running in background as I contemplated whether or not to attend the PS 99 reunion, although I certainly anticipated that I would not; it smelled like death, not youth.

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

If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century.