Basketball is really my sport (not that you'd know it from seeing me play) but I grew up in the Bronx, used to sit in the cheap seats behind the first base line at Yankee Stadium with my father, eating peanuts and watching Da Bronx Bombers. Baseball has an elegance and grace in its DNA that no other sport can equal, although in practice that can lead to slow, boring games. Which is okay; one of the reasons to go to a baseball game is to talk and hang out with your buddies, watching the outfield grass grow. You can't do that at a basketball game, which you go to for the purpose of yelling yourself hoarse and getting your heart pounding with your buddies. My dad and I weren't close; the closest we ever came to being close were those afternoons at the ball park. That's what baseball gives you: space. It's no accident the ballpark's so big. The psychic space you can inhabit grows to match it.

Why am I thinking about this now? Because of the playoffs and the Series? Maybe a little, but mostly because I read a baseball statistic in Sports Illustrated today that I just loved. Because it's all about elegance, baseball is also all about statistics. Every moment in baseball can be sliced into tiny slivers, each to be viewed through any number of specialized microscopes. This is what I learned this morning: "The Florida Marlins are the first major league team in 103 years to steal seven bases in a nine-inning game while scoring just one run." See what I mean? Calm, contemplative elegance doesn't get better than that.