When I was a kid back in the fifties and sixties I loved to watch the World Series.  I lived in Long Beach NY and the city of New York had three teams at that time.  The New York Yankees, the Giants (up in the Bronx) and the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I sort of divided my loyalty between them, they were all pretty cool.  It was a golden age of baseball and I would plead illness to stay home and watch the Series.  Sometimes, I was able to prevail, sometimes not.  In any case, only the Yankees remain there today, the Giants and Dodgers, both having made the journey west to California, as did I.  I wasn't athletic at all, I was much more of a geek, although an artistic one, but I knew the names of all the players.  I think I actually had a baseball card collection at one time.  Mickey Mantle, Don Dreisdale, Yogi Berra, I loved them all.  I can still hear the Gillette theme as if it was yesterday.  But those days are gone.  Today, the Dodgers are right here in L.A. and the Giants are big rivals from San Francisco.  It looks like they may come to blows in the playoffs and maybe the Series, oh. joy!  I have gotten hooked all over again with the Dodgers.  They are my guys, my baseball family.  I yell at them, cheer them on, laugh at their antics and thoroughly enjoy it when they are winning.  I have trouble watching when they are losing.  The other night things were going so badly against the Padres that I had to turn them off.  It was just too pathetic.  But tonight they played a stunning game against the Giants.  Barry Bonds notwithstanding.  It was very much a cliffhanger up to the last pitch by our hero Eric Gagne, the great saver himself.  The score was 3 to 2, the Giants had the bases loaded and 2 outs.  How exciting could you get?  Bonds had been intentionally walked.  The crowd in San Francisco was hysterical.  Eric prevailed and I cheered and all was as it should be.  It's funny how excited people get about sports.  Now I understand it.  Baseball is still the Great American Pastime.  It's an awful lot better than those rotten reality shows and the violent CSI's and other crime shows.  If more people were watching baseball our country would be a lot more entertained, and a lot less crazy.  At least, that's my opinion.