Baseball

I'm not a big baseball fan, although when I was a kid it was my game. And I especially liked baseball fiction, such as the books by John R. Tunis and Wilfred McCormack. Later I read quite a few adult baseball novels, like THE SOUTHPAW and BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY by Mark Harris. These days, though, I'm more interested in football and basketball.

However . . . how can anybody not get caught up in the baseball playoffs going on? As I write this the Red Sox and the Yankees are in the bottom of the ninth as the Red Sox try to continue their miraculous comeback from being down three games to none in the ALCS. I don't like the Red Sox much, but I'm rooting for them against the Yankees. And, petty though it may be, against A-Rod. Got quite a kick out of it earlier when he tried his "knock the ball out of the glove" stunt, which he wouldn't have gotten away with on most elementary schoolyards, let alone in front of forty or fifty or however many million people. And over in the National League, the Astros have become a sentimental favorite for me, because I watched several of their games on TV with my dad during the last weeks of his life. If the Astros make the World Series, I'm sure I'll root for them against either the Yankees or the Red Sox.

I had a pretty good day writing today and also finished reading one of the books submitted for the Spur Award competition. I'm going to take a break from them and read something else for a day or two, but I haven't decided what yet.

Well, the Red Sox just won to force Game Seven, the first time in playoff history to be down 0-3 and take the series to seven games. Pretty good stuff. But I'll be surprised if the Yankees don't win the next one.