“I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.”--Walt Whitman The Philadelphia Phillies won the National League pennant tonight and I'm happy about that. Merle Wayne Sneed is a baseball fan and a lifelong Phillies fan, which is odd for a guy who has only been to Philadelphia once in his life. I'm not a hardcore fan, I can't pull up current statistics or even tell you who's leading the league most of the time. I enjoy baseball when I have the chance to see it, and I follow my Phils throughout the season, at least until they are out of contention. Beyond that, I don't pay that much attention. Baseball is a game that everyone can understand. The strategy is plain for all to see. Unlike football, where there are dozens of things happening on the field at any time and dozens of plays, baseball is elegant in its simplicity. Last week, my oldest son called me to ask why I was a Phillies fan. Evidently he and his wife had been speculating about it and decided to go right to the source for an answer. When I was eight and living in Omaha, my first little league baseball team was the Phillies. The story is no more complicated than that. The protocol for eight-year-olds was that you rooted for the major league team of the same name as your little league team. Over the little league years I played on teams called the Dodgers, White Sox and the Reds, but I always remained a fan of the Phillies, I just couldn't shake them. When I was twelve, I was beaned by a fastball thrown by a kid named Karl and serious injured. Even though, I continued to play baseball after that, I was never the same. I never lost my fear of being beaned again. Through the sixties and seventies, I agonized over my love for the Phillies because they were horrible, rivaling the Cubs in futility. I tried to switch my allegiance to the Dodgers, but it just wouldn't take. I was thrilled in 1980 when the Phils won the World Series and disappointed in 1983 and 1993 when they lost it. Over the years I have been fortunate to visit the major league ballparks in a half dozen or so cities. Mrs. Sneed is always a good sport about going to the games, even though she positively hates it. So, the Phillies are on to the World Series, where I will hope the best for them. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky