Ya gotta be careful with the idea that there's such a thing as a good defeat, because the next morning you're looking at what that meant in the standings and in time off the calendar, and suddenly it's awfully hard to see the good. But still, I shut off the TV a few minutes after […]

It was 1998. Bobby Cox threw everybody but Chief Noc-a-Homa at us to throttle our desperate bid for a wild-card spot. Mike Piazza, booed at Shea after his roundabout trip from L.A. to New York via Miami, seemed destined to head elsewhere. Our final memories would be seeing him standing helplessly at the dugout rail […]

So tonight, returned from the land of pine trees, black bears and staticky losses against the Pirates, I wound up locked out and wandering across my little slice of Brooklyn. It's too complicated to explain and not very interesting, but the elements were a similarly locked-out wife without a cellphone; a two-and-a-half-year-old being entertained by […]

Hey, didja miss me?

[Jace ignores silence.]

Up here in Maine, I was behind the wheel of a big pig of a U-Haul truck as game time neared. Flipping around the AM dial, I was able to pick up the Portland Sea Dogs playing the New Hampshire Fisher Cats (at least I think that's who they were […]

The baseball gods, capricious as they are, like to save their weirder displays for matinees which will be viewed on the sly by all those fans trapped in offices, reloading GameCast or peering furtively at TVs with the sound turned down. I was convinced of this a long time ago, and today's game certainly did […]

Time to start thinking about 2006.

This team ain't catching the Nationals, no matter what the Nats' run differential says their record should be. This team ain't closing 5.5 games worth of ground on the Braves either. I know, you could argue we haven't had a run, one of those where you win 14 of 17 […]

It was one of those days: Emily's birthday (yes, she shares it with George Steinbrenner and the Republic), a friend in town, outings planned for the birthday girl and Joshua. Lots to do, in other words — and in the middle of it, a suddenly not-so-appealing date with the Washington Nationals, the who'da-thunk-it kings of […]

“Joshua, do you know you saw Dontrelle Willis pitch back before you even knew you loved baseball?”

“The D-Train? Really?”

“Yep. It was early in his career — we were still getting used to the D-Train thing then. That Reed Richards leg kick still made our eyes pop. And back then we hadn't gotten it through our […]

Well, it was fun. Now here we are in more-familiar confines: Last place, .500 record.

We were heading out to dinner and wound up behind a gaggle of depressed Brooklyn Heights Met fans who'd obviously just returned from the game: They'd stripped off their gear and were holding their Beltran bobbleheads glumly, like they wanted to […]

Hope you get an enjoyable visit today — we'll be there tomorrow for Joshua's second-ever Mets game. He's very excited, though I'm not sure how we're going to handle the fact that he's somehow gotten it into his head that he's going to play. (Perhaps I've been telling him too many tales of the 2003 […]