B is for Brilliant.

It's a beautiful thing. The Sox once again in the World Series...

I love baseball, when you get to the heart of the thing, when you can strip away all the bullshit and look beyond the guys who aren't there for the purity of it. (It's a lot like cycling in that way.)

Forgive me for the indulgence, but I've not been able to follow the game as closely as I'd like these last couple of years. I'm no longer bourgeois enough for cable (actually, it's largely a principle thing), and so it's only during the playoffs (when the networks actually broadcast the games) or when I happen to get lucky with the controlled TVs at the gym, that I actually get to enjoy the pleasure of a good game.

Which leads me down a path of nostalgia for all the times I used to go to Mariners games, take in the city of Seattle for a day and then head to the ballpark, feel the energy, smell the mingling of grass and leather and beer and Pacific NW air. When you're watching teams with real heart, with long histories, it's even sweeter. Delicious, I tell you.

As an aside...these instances always make me wonder how people can say they don't like baseball. It's like sacrilege, or something. A lot of "unbelievers" I know say it's boring. But that's because they don't understand the incredible strategy that is involved, the delicate dance. And at the core of it all is a history, a history that is bound up in the emergence of a national spirit, though perhaps not as salient as it once was. The way I see it, to say that baseball is boring is like saying that listening to something like Beethoven's famous Symphony 3 is boring because it lasts a long time and there are no lyrics. The nuances, the story that is being told are what's important; it ought to be critically examined. Baseball is no different.

Anywho, the point is that good moments in baseball remind me how good it feels to be alive. They give me hope, even if it's short-lived and somehow superficial. And these days, I'll take what I can get.

I love this game.

GO SOX!