Introduction

This being my first baseball blog, I'll start off with a short history of my baseball life.

I started watching baseball in 1962, when I was 7. It was the year of the Amazin' Mets, losers of historical proportion. Maybe it was because the Mets had no history like the Dodgers and Giants, but at that time it didn't seem to be a problem to root for both the Mets and the Yankees, and so I did. By the time I was 13, I was taking the subway to games every day it was possible, which added up to around 30 games a summer. I sat in the upper deck, $1.50 at Yankee Stadium and $1.30 at Shea. It's a perspective on the game I still value.

I have been lucky enough in the course of my life to attend 10 World Series. The Mets-Orioles in 1969, Yankees-Dodgers in 1977 and 1978, Orioles-Pirates in 1979, Phillies-Toronto in 1993, Yankees-Atlanta in 1996, Yankees-Mets in 2000, Yankees-Florida in 2003, and the Phillies in 2008 and 2009. I saw the final game of 6 of them. I've been a partial season ticket holder for the Phillies since the late 1990's and have averaged 25-30 games a year since the Phils moved into Citizens Bank Park. I estimate I've seen somewhere north of 1000 games in about a dozen different ballparks.

I saw Sandy Koufax pitch once. I saw Reggie Jackson hit home runs on 3 consecutive swings in the 1977 World Series. I saw Frank Tanana set the record for strikeouts by a lefty in 1975 and saw Ron Guidry break it in 1978. I finally saw my first no-hitter when Roy Halladay did it in the playoffs last year.

I have also been playing Strat-O-Matic Baseball since 1967 and Rotisserie League Baseball, the original fantasy sports game, since 1984, the year the original book and official rules were published.

Do I know everything about baseball? Absolutely not, what would be the fun of that? But I've seen enough to appreciate and love it and to want to write about it, along with my daughter. There's a lot baseball writing out there, so we will do our utmost to provide some kind of unique insight and have some fun doing it. And we promise not to write 10 things in the next few weeks and then flame out.