In My Right Mind

It appears that this line from a post earlier today -- "Did anyone go home afterward not thinking that maybe - just, maybe - this is the year?" -- caused some Pittsblog readers to question my intellectual and emotional well-being. This is the year for what, some might ask, and I deliberately left that question hanging.

But I have here my very own blog-alyzer, a device that is dead-on balls accurate (it's an industry term) in judging the level-headedness of any blog post about baseball in Pittburgh. That device reports, and I quote:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.
...
Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

I'll be at PNC Park tomorrow night. See you there.