A strange thing happens when you've been a fan of baseball all of your life. As a child, you learn to play and if the passion is there, it became a daily part of who you are. You lived and died by the strikeouts, walks, stolen bases, popups dropped, bunts, and the occasional flash of brilliance that surprised even you. There was Little League and PAL and Babe Ruth and you marched in parades with your uniforms. You played whiffleball and stick ball and the only stick ball you could use was a Spalding. Your glove was a part of your body and it had to feel right. And the passion meant that in the pre-video game era, you played from dawn until dusk and when it rained you played Stratomatic or made up your own dice games and kept stats. And you watched the big boys play on TV or listened to the radio.

I was lucky there. I was a Yankee fan (still am), but before you judge me for that, I became a fan in the days of Horace Clarke (I think he had the biggest back seat in the history of the game) and Jerry Kenny and Roy White. In those days, the Yankees always finished near the bottom. After my dad died, my mom sent us to the stadium on Saturdays because she worked. Four dollars each got my brother and I on the bus, and then the subway and into the bleachers with enough left over to have a hotdog and a coke and get ourselves home again. The poor gal would get arrested for child endangerment if she were to try that today! But it was great for us then and can you imagine that with four dollars each, by the fourth inning (when the ushers quit) we were sitting by the dugout!

Oh yes, back to the lucky part: Watching the Yankees on TV meant Phil Rizzuto. I don't know what he was like in real life, but as a broadcaster, he was our friend and helped us grow that passion because it was obvious that he carried that passion as well. And he was hysterical. We laughed and he even made stuffed shirts like Bill White and Frank Messer laugh. I can't imagine a better listening and watching experience growing up with baseball than doing so with the old Huckleberry. And the weekends were great too with Curt Gowdy and Joe Garagiola.

Those were the days when you developed idols and dreamed of being like them. The Sporting News was at it's peak and each team in baseball had it's own page and feature writer (the last I looked, they were down to less than a column of a page per team--is anything as good as when we were kids? Yes, but we'll get to that). The writing was fantastic and you got to know the players on other teams. My early heroes were Mickey Mantle, Mel Stottlemyre, Bobby Murcer (I had his stance down perfectly) and later Munson and Nettles and Guidry. I wanted to grow up to be them.

And then I did grow up and the dream became displaced by reality. I had to work and had a family and life got complicated and those guys on TV were still my important to me, but now they were what I could have been if I had worked harder or had the tenacity to try if I wasn't so afraid of failure. By then I was in New Hampshire and had to watch the Red Sox (those dreaded rivals) and a funny thing happened: I became the only person in America who was a fan of the Red Sox AND the Yankees. The Red Sox were cool then. With Fisk, Evans, Rice, Tiant and the rest, it was fun to watch. The years the Red Sox came up on top were okay. The years the Yanks edged them out were better. But it was no longer idol worship and the strikes started and I grew restless. I hung in there despite the anger I felt at times.

And now, for the first time in my life, I am older than the players. They are no longer my peers. And so I demand more. I expect more. Baseball is more of a morality play and a reason to root for underdogs and good guys. ESPN is the greatest thing to happen to baseball since the Sunday Boston Globe. Baseball Tonight gives instant gratification. The Web gives us real time box scores. Life is great for this baseball fan of forty plus years.

Baseball is my passion but I can see it with clear eyes. I believe that as a fan, I have worthwhile things to say and look! Blogging gives us that opportunity. So as the season goes by, I'll use this blog site to comment on what I see, what I feel and what I think. And maybe...just maybe...Clemens will get his 300th early and not give me an ulcer worrying about it.