"It breaks your heart. 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. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."

Bart Giamatti, former baseball commissioner

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I stopped watching tonight's game in the 6th inning. I couldn't stomach seeing the Phillies celebrate their second consecutive World Series birth at our expense. I'm disappointed right now. Anytime love and expectation are involved disappointment inevitably lurks, waiting for the moment you are most eager, most vulnerable... then...

It shows up. Not like some unexpected guest asking for directions to Maple Street. No, it shows up to throw your furniture around and spray paint obscenities on your wall and tell you there's nothing you can do about it. It shows up like a baseball knifing through the frosty Philadelphia night and you hold your breath, hoping that when the ball lands it will be in the leather glove of a man wearing blue. Instead the ball keeps flying and flying, disregarding your pleas for it to stop it eventually lands in a sea of red hysteria. The other men in red come around and score and celebrate. A lot of men in red would score tonight.

The baseball season lasts 162 games. The Dodgers played 170 games this year and if I had my wish they would've played a few more. The Dodgers did so many things right in 2009, but in the end, they did too many things wrong. But alas, love covers a multitude of sins. (A timely home run also covers a multitude of sins but I digress). I think the deeper sadness for me here is that the baseball season comes to an abrupt end. Football may now be America's most popular sport but baseball will always be this nation's pastime. Steve Busby articulated it wonderfully in the Washington Post several years ago,

"Baseball, to me, is still the national pastime because it is a summer game. I feel that almost all Americans are summer people, that summer is what they think of when they think of their childhood. I think it stirs up an incredible emotion with people."

I miss it already.

This is my third straight baseball post but as a long-suffering Dodgers fan please indulge me as I revel in their recent success. I promise once the playoffs are over I will blog about something more of you care about. Lakers basketball. What, you were expecting something spiritual?

The best of seven N.L.C.S. begins today in L.A. For you baseball novices that stands for National League Championship Series, the winner of which will move on to play the American League champion in the World Series. I'm not going to bore you here with a statistical breakdown of the matchup between the Dodgers and Phillies or even offer a series prediction (Dodgers in 6). No, on the eve of this year's N.L.C.S. I want to pay homage to the host of tonight's game - Dodger Stadium.

Dodger Stadium is now the third oldest stadium in baseball. Only Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston have seen more action among active ballparks. Despite it's age, 47 to be exact, Dodger Stadium has aged gracefully and remains one of the best places on earth to catch a ballgame. Many stadiums built after Dodger Stadium have since been torn down and no longer exist. This is a testament to the architects and designers who understood that clean design elements are timeless. And while a lot of the stadiums subsequently built in the '60s and '70s possessed a simple design structure, they were also uninspired. A good designer knows the difference between simple and boring. To Dodger Stadium's benefit it helps having the Elysian Hills and San Gabriel mountains serve as a gorgeous natural backdrop beyond the outfield walls. Inside, there are four tiers of seating, each section a different color - yellow, orange, turquoise, and blue - a muted, modern palette that emulates the California sky. No other stadium has different colored seats, and in the rare instances where they've attempted it, the results have left much to be desired (google "Astrodome" and you'll see what I mean).

By no means is Dodger Stadium perfect. It's concourses are too narrow and good luck getting food and going to the restroom without missing 3 innings of action. And if you ever ask someone how to take public transportation to Dodger Stadium prepare to get laughed at for ten minutes.

Many of the new stadiums that are being built these days have state-of-the-art fixtures and amenities and are great places to watch baseball. I've been to Petco Park in San Diego and "Whatever-phone-company-they're-calling-it-now" Park in San Francisco. Both stadiums are beautiful and unique but a lot of the coolness seems contrived. For instance in San Diego, an old factory building was included in the park's construction and stands as part of the stadium design in left field. Is it cool? Yeah. But it's forced cool. A lot of these new "retro" stadiums seem artificial in that regard.

Dodger Stadium is cool. Not 'flashy' cool like the new stadiums. Not 'quaint' cool like Wrigley and Fenway. Just cool. It's about baseball when you go to Dodger Stadium (For the most part anyways. Man I wish they would kill the between inning entertainment). The next couple years will bring about some significant renovations to the stadium as they seek to modernize it and enhance the gameday experience. Let's hope they're able to make these changes without stripping Dodger Stadium of it's classic beauty and charm. That, would not be cool.

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"When the sun sets at Dodger Stadium, I am impressed first of all with the mountains because, at this time of year, they are fully defined. It makes me think of some of the great artists who did Western paintings - Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, Frank McCarthy, to name a few - because they must have been inspired by that.

And then the cloud formations. At sunset, they turn pink. And as it continues, the closer you are to sunset, the clouds are still kind of gold. Farther away in center field and right field, you’re away from the sunset and the clouds are turning purple. So you think of an artist’s palette with various colors, and it just takes your breath away.

Down on the field, a ballgame is just beginning. But the sunset becomes a major distraction because it’s so overwhelming it’s hard to take your eyes off it. And then the palm trees — there’s a group of palm trees on the hill behind left field — they are defined against the sky, and they are turning colors with the sunset. You can’t see that anywhere else in a ballpark."

Vin Scully
Dodgers announcer for 60 years and counting