I floated away into that omnipresent timelessness of baseball, where boys with a dream and long-expired Major Leaguers orbit forever on equal planes.

You don't ask the sun why you orbit, you just orbit. You let the gravitational waves of the baseball season pull you in and you surrender yourself, happily.

From the first moment I started to uncover the infinite mysteries of baseball--like why players chose to wear certain numbers, what the brown stuff in players' mouths was, and just what the hell a balk entailed--I was hooked.

Baseball taught me how to love.The game made sense to me, and spending time with it felt more like an obsessive relationship than a simple want.

You realize that the sleeping stadium is more beautiful at night, with the unshakable quietus rooting it to the earth. It rests like a graveyard--empty but throbbing all at once. With the pollution of light extinguished, maybe you even see the Dog Star blinking back at you.

It turned out that life only mattered inasmuch as it could be sectioned off on baseball's terms.

Days during the baseball season don't start with M, T, W, F, or S. They only start with G or O: game day or off day.