“We’re consistently inconsistent. That’s the best way to put it.”
Derek Jeter

There isn’t much mystery left for baseball fans today when batting averages and ERA’s are updated by Game Day after each at-bat. You don’t have to wait an entire week to see the league leaders. It’s all right there at our finger tips. Not only can we see pitch sequences, we learn how fast the pitch was thrown and at what angle.

One of the last remaining elements of suspense for me are west coast games, because I don’t generally stay up for them, and I never have. When I was a kid, I’d doze off in the first few innings. Now, I just won’t put myself through it. I get too worked up. If I had been watching Tuesday night’s nail-biter I don’t know how I would have settled down to fall asleep. So I’ll watch the first few innings and then turn the TV off. After I saw Alex Rodriguez strike out for the second time–he was absolutely baffled by Justin Duchscherer–I said, that’s it for me.

I like the anticipation that comes with waking up in the morning, wondering what actually happened while most of the east coast was sleeping–or at least the early birds like me. The heat wave is gone in New York, and there was a lovely, cool breeze that accompanied me on my walk to the subway. I don’t check the scores on TV the moment I get up, or catch them on the radio or turn my computer on. I walk to the subway and buy the papers.

What a drag it was to discover that the Yanks took it on the chin last night in Oakland, 8-4. “Damn,” I said as I scanned the back page of the News; the kid who sells the papers looked up at me with a quizzical expression. And such a nice morning too. Oh, well. On with the day. Still, no matter the result, I cherish the moments of anticipation, filled with fantasy and imagination, the ten minutes it takes to reach the subway, that lead up to discovering what actually happened.