Oh, the Streets You’re Walking on a Thousand Houses Long, Well, That’s Where I Belong and You Belong With Me

Well my friends, it seems as though Satan has decided to build a new Hell. No, I'm not talking about that guy with forked hooves and a pitchfork, but rather that guy who always wears blazers and turtlenecks. The Yankees unveiled plans yesterday for a new stadium that will open in 2009, which just happens to be the same year that the Mets will be opening a new stadium. It seems as though the Evil Empire just cannot bear being second to anyone in their own city.

Perhaps it is because of my idealistic and romantic tendencies, but baseball has always been the game for me. This does not always mean that I have played it, but the game has always held a certain appeal in my eyes. It might be the timeless quality of the game. The fact that the game is not measured in hours and minutes, but in innings and outs. It could be the idea that I could see Babe Ruth batting against Randy Johnson in the crucible of October, but the idea of Allen Iverson going against Bob Cousy with the NBA Championship on the line seems preposterous to me.

It could be that almost all of the great writing in America on sports has been about baseball. This is by no means a catch all, but you find that writers like Halberstam, Will, Kahn, Hemingway, and Stephen King all gravitate towards baseball in some way. It could be that it some people wait their entire lives to see their team win the championship and never do. When was the last time you heard a Miami Dolphins supporter, or for that matter any football fan, lamenting the drought since their last championship the way that Cubs fans do?

The game inspires great devotion and great despair. Part of the reason that I still root for the Cubs in some small way is because I know that my great uncle Beck went his entire life without seeing his beloved Cubbies bring a championship back to the North Side of Chicago. So maybe that is what this is all about. How a game can connect people in ways that words or other interactions cannot. How the act of sitting in the bleachers watching a game can make you feel younger than any plastic surgery could ever hope to.