Football is the most popular sport in America. In the fall and winters months, football is a Thursday through Monday event. Football is exciting! The strategy, the athleticism, the hard hits, the long passes, the trick plays. There is nothing quite like American Football. Still, I can't think of a single event in any sport that is better than the World Series. Baseball is an experience. You go to the arena for basketball and hockey, to the stadium for football, but for baseball you go the park. The experience of baseball is a day at the park: the hot dogs, cracker jacks, the bratwurst, the peanuts. It's not something you go and watch, it's something you experience.

I remember my last year of college at Oklahoma Christian--it was the 2001 World Series (Arizona versus the Yankees). I worked nights at UPS and was unable to watch more than the first four or five innings of a given game. I didn't get to see Game 7 (at UPS, the work week starts on Sunday night) when Randy Johnson came out of the bullpen, after having thrown 104 pitches in Game 6 (on the previous night), but I saw the replay on ESPN. I LOVED the way the crowd screamed when Johnson ran to the mound, and some how you knew, you just knew, that those sorry Yankees were about to get dealt, baby! Of course, I saw it in replay, so it wasn't the same, but some plays in sports...some of them keep the electricity and you feel it every time you see it.

My roommate that year told me he thought the baseball season should end in September, that in October the weather is too cold. But I like October baseball. I like to see the boys of summer shiver and blow hot air on their hands as they try to make all that summertime effort worth it. But, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I just love October. I love it when the weather gets cooler. I love it when baseball gets cooler, and more serious. There is nothing as serious as a pitcher staring down a hitter as steam shoots from his mouth and nostrils like a bull preparing to attack an overmatched matador--kind of like Adam Wainwright last night.

Yes, I am a diehard Cardinals fan.