I think I’m just going to have to accept the fact that I am no longer a baseball fan. This is a difficult admission for me to make, because baseball was extremely important to me for many, many years. As a child I was an Atlanta Braves fan, because they were the team nearest my home in Alabama, and one of my most treasured rituals involved drifting off to sleep while listening to the Braves’ West Coast road trips. Milo Hamilton was the Braves’ lead announcer in those days, but the announcer I loved the most was Ernie Harwell for the Detroit Tigers, whom I was able to hear because WJR radio in Detroit had an incredibly powerful signal that I could pick up with perfect clarity at night. (Ernie remains for me the ideal baseball announcer; I have always felt that much of the adulation that Vin Scully receives would have been better directed at Ernie.)

As I became more knowledgeable about the game I became a Baltimore Orioles fan; I didn’t cease to cheer for the Braves, but at some point I decided I needed an American League team to follow and the Orioles fascinated me. (I think they first came to my attention in the 1970 World Series—the Brooks Robinson World Series, as I still think of it, thanks to the wizardly defensive plays the Orioles’ great third baseman made throughout that series.) Soon enough the Orioles displaced the Braves in my affections, and I became a fervent proponent of the strategy promoted by their pint-sized but volatile manager Earl Weaver: “Pitching, defense, and three-run homers.” Earl was also a great proponent of left-right platooning, and in the early 1980s when most people thought that Jim Rice of the Red Sox was the best left fielder in the American League, I knew that the best left fielder was in fact the combination of Gary Roenicke (who played against, and murdered, lefties) and John Lowenstein (who played against, and murdered, righties).