From: "John Beamish" 

I've always liked the game of baseball -- as one of my coaches said:
There's more strategy between two pitches in a game of baseball than there
is in an entire game of hockey.  Note that I said I liked the game.  I
don't really follow teams (except for the Jays in 92 and 93) or players
(well, okay, Rocky Nelson).

But the game has a certain rhythm to it (just as, from the little I've
seen, cricket does).  And it seems that baseball brings out the best
writers and the best of them write with a cadence that matches the game.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/magazine/25baseball.t.html?ei=5090&en=227050d
8c3c8845b&ex=1332475200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

The moment possessed that rare, rapturous feeling of a dream come true.
Adam Greenberg knelt in the on-deck circle, awaiting his first at-bat in
his first major-league game. He had arrived at this occasion by
successfully ascending all those smaller steps along the way: Little
League, Legion ball, high-school ball, college ball, the minor leagues. He
was 24 now, an outfielder playing his best baseball ever. The Chicago Cubs
had promoted him from their Double A farm club in West Tennessee. �
�Greenie, get a bat, you� �re hitting for the pitcher,� � Dick Pole, the
bench
coach, told him in the top of the ninth. The Cubs were up 4-2 over the
Florida Marlins. It was a Saturday night, July 2005. Towers of beaming
light fended off the dark for a Miami crowd of nearly 23,000. The air was
steamy. A pelting rain had left the grass with its deepest color. As Adam
left the dugout, he wrapped his hands around his favorite bat, a Zinger
model X53, a 34-incher with a black head and a cherry handle. He breathed
in the familiar smell of the polished wood. Dusty Baker, the Cubs manager,
called out encouragingly, � �C� �mon, Greenie, get on!� �

Everything about this milestone was as thrilling as he had envisioned it in
a thousand boyhood imaginings. Two days earlier, he got the news from the
Cubs at a Day� �s Inn in Kodak, Tenn. A first-class plane ticket to Florida
was waiting in his name. There would be no more daylong bus rides
 from nowhere to nowhere, no more paying rent month to month, no more
pinching pennies on a minor-league meal allowance. In Fort Lauderdale, he
was booked at a Marriott on the waterfront. Awaiting him in his room was a
note of congratulations from his agent along with an iced bottle of Dom
Perignon and two Champagne flutes, each holding a blue napkin and a pink
carnation. At the ballpark, he was issued a uniform with 17 on the back,
the number once worn by Mark Grace, the Cubs star first baseman of the �
�90s. There was also some pleasurable paperwork to complete. He signed a
contract for $316,000. The salary was the major-league minimum, but it
didn� �t seem so minimal to him. It was 15 times what he had been earning
before.

Greenberg� �s parents, Mark and Wendy, rushed to Miami for the occasion,
bringing along Adam� �s two younger brothers, Sam and Max, and one of his
two sisters, Loren. Some remodeling was being done to their home in
Guilford, Conn. They hurriedly scrawled a note to the contractor on a piece
of Sheetrock: � �We� �re on our way to Florida. Adam is a major leaguer.� �
Mark thought his son had defied incredible odds: � �Adam is a 5-9,
180-pound Jewish kid from Connecticut. You don� �t see a lot of those in
professional baseball.� � Now the family was watching the game from the box
seats behind home plate. When Adam came out of the dugout, Wendy sneaked
down to the first row with a camera. � �You can� �t be down here,� � an
usher chided. � �But that� �s my son,� � she insisted.

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