No team won more World's Series between when they were started (1903) and 1918, than the Boston Red Socks.

The Boston Red Socks traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees (otherwise known as the Damn Yankees, on this page) shortly after that season.

In the time since then, the **** Yankees have won 26 World Series.

The second best team on that "All Time" list is the St. Louis Cardinals. My Cards have won 12.

The only World's Series that the Red Socks have won since 1918 was this last year. They beat the St. Louis Cardinals.

(If I hadn't been in Iraq, and could have gone to some home games ... I had my rally cap ready! Things might have turned out differently.)

It's a pasttime. Something you do.

It's entertainment. Something you watch.

And it's a shared experience. Something you talk and read about.

And that's marvelous.

But you can apply those same three criteria to other things.

What makes baseball special is that it's the best game that has ever been devised.

First thing about it, and this seems so obvious that, maybe, we overlook it, baseball is a beautiful thing. It's more beautiful in an old park that's asymmetrical and "quirky".

But even, and I hate to say this because it might encourage them, ... but even in a dome with artificial turf, it's beautiful.

The way the field fans out. The choreography of the sport. The pace and rhythm of it. The fact that that "pace and rhythm" allows for conversation, and reflection, and comparison.

(a newspaper quote)

In our sundown perambulations of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball.

Let us go forth a while, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms.

The game of ball is glorious.

--Walt Whitman

That is the title of the first song in the musical "Damn Yankees". Amy and I have acted in that show. It's about baseball. Actually, it's the story of Faust retold as a baseball story.

I digress.

My wife says that she can relate to the lyrics, though.

Why?

Because, it is that time of year again. Spring is in the air ... and in Florida, and Arizona, the Major League clubs are in spring training.

In about a week or so, the regular season will start.

My life is GREAT! I am not in Iraq. I am living with my wife and dogs. We went to a wonderful performance of the Bach's St. Matthew's Passion last night. AND I have two fantasy baseball teams going, already. You can find them here: Radar's Rangers, and Linus' Lounge Lizards.

Plus! I get to re-watch the Ken Burns documentary on baseball.

I'll share some stuff from it that, I think, will help you understand why I love the game.

I was cleaning up my bookmarks tonight while watching TV.

Guess what?

It turns out that Tag-Board is up and running, again.

Good thing. I was not real crazy about the links that Chatterbox put in their board.

I don't mind putting links to services that I use for free. In fact, I think that is best thing to do, especially, if they provide good service. But, someone else putting links for sites and services that I don't use onto my site. Not crazy about that.

So, the old Tagboard is back. I will only switch to Chatterbox again if Tag-Board goes down.

We are sitting watching the first season of Mad About You. Steven Wright is playing Paul's camera man/editor. They are discussing marriage when Steven Wright asks:

"If you're married for a million years, does your wedding album go platinum?"

Wow!!!

Of course, this is just as Spain is memorializing the one year anniversary of the Madrid Train bombings.

Keep in mind, that a "fatwa" is what Ayatollah Khomeini issued against Salman Rushdie for his novel "The Satanic Verses".

I figured that I would provide some proof that I am home.

This is a picture of Amy and I shortly after my unit's welcome home ceremony. It was taken in the old gym here on post in Bamberg.

I have not died or dropped off of the face of the earth. I will have to post a few pics soon to prove that. I have been really enjoying living with my wife and dogs.

I was discussing blogging and web page creation with a friend the other day, and showed him my blog. He quickly pointed out that my location was no longer Tikrit, Iraq. I was, in fact, in Bamberg, Germany.

Then, when I started poking around on the site, I remembered that I finished the George Carlin book the day before yesterday, and I had not listened to most of the CD's in the listening area in some time.

Finally, when I started fixing some of that stuff, I noticed I was having problems with Blogger accepting my changes. It appears that the people that I got my tagboard from went out of business. This was the second tagboard that I have installed on the board, only to have the people that run it go under. So, there is a new one. It's called a chatterbox by the people at flooble.com. We'll see how this goes.

So, there are some changes here. Check things out.

I'm thinking about playing around with the general look and feel ... again. So, there may be some more changes in the near future.

I, also, plan on writing some in the near future.