“It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” A. Bartlett Giamatti, Yale University President 1978-1986, National League President 1986-1989, Commissioner April 1, 1989-September 1, 1989, when he died of a heart attack. The quote is from the Yale Alumni Magazine; I discovered it in The Yale Book of Quotations.

Photo above of Milwaukee Brewers’ Carlos Gomez from elnuevoherald.com

Shot below of St. Louis Cardinal Joe Mather from theguardian.com.

Todd and I sat right behind home plate at a Bowie Baysox game. The tickets were only $14 a piece, but the light crowd opted for even cheaper seats, so we were alone down there until a man and woman arrived and sat a seat away from us. He talked to the batters’ backs, said things like, “My granddaughter can bat better than you.” After a few such remarks from him, one batter turned around to see who had the mouth. The batter studied the three men sitting behind the plate, Todd, myself, and the stranger. The youth with the baseball bat on his shoulder didn’t glare, just stared with the expression of a young man, who, if he weren’t in uniform representing an organization, and if there weren’t a fence between him and us, would have put down his baseball bat and with his hands dismantled us piece by piece. Being a homosexual man, I instinctively loved the batter, as I love all young men, and wanted to pop up from my seat and plead to him, “Son, it wasn’t me!”

The photo below, from cincylibrary.tumblr.com, is of Vine Street, Cincinnati, Ohio, after the Cincinnati Red’s won the 1940 World Series.