Just what the heck is Psychic Baseball?

Psychic Baseball was a baseball board game popular about sixty years ago. My version of Psychic Baseball is devoted to the things in my life I enjoy most: sports, books, art, computers, and the Oakland Athletics. This portion of my site is devoted to baseball, with an Oakland Athletics Fan Page, Athletics Trivia Book and links, as well as a Baseball Gallery with quotes. Like quite a few others in America with a modem and a tendency towards the obsessive, I've tried to make a site that is fun--for me first, but hopefully if it is fun for me it may be fun for others, too.

One of my favorite hobbies is playing a game called Statis-Pro Baseball. It's a simulated board game that uses cards. I picked up my first game at a garage sale for 4 bucks about eight years ago-I got another one a year later at a Volunteers of America store for $.89-and I played through the 1985 season game by game, keeping box scores and stats for my team, the Oakland Athletics. It was a great season, everybody got to play, even though Dwayne Murphy for some reason couldn't hit for shit, gold glove or not, and I spent hours blissfully finding a way to get Bill Krueger and Steve Mura a couple of innings of work. Everything turned out fine by season's end, even though our starting second baseman was killed before the season began in a tragic accident. (My dog ate Donnie Hill's stat card.) There are dozens of these games out there and, believe me, they are truly a lot of fun. Many years ago, there used to be another baseball board game out called "Psychic Baseball." Hence the name for my page and an excuse, no matter how lame, for linking "psychic" and "baseball" together.

But there is another reason, too. I think baseball fills a need, whether it is spiritual or aesthetic or just a way to blow off some pent-up testosterone, I don't know. But it gives me something, something in my heart, that art or books could never give me. Some of my most intense transcendent moments in life were not spent in church or wandering through museums but playing basketball or fielding grounders by the hour in the hot summer sun. When I was truly on and the ball would go just where I wanted it to go it was like time turned to maple syrup. Everything was slow, slow, slow. And I could fly just like a bird in the sky.

What better definition for spirituality could there be?

Baseball truly is a great game. In my opinion, it is the most beautiful game of all.