The year after the baseball strike I was in Los Angeles and was offered front row tickets right next to the left field dugout. Suddenly all my frustration about the strike and all those thoughts about how I'll never watch another baseball game, went out the window. "Front row seats, huh? Umm ... okay!"

Me and my best friend went to see the Los Angeles Dodgers play the Atlanta Braves.

It was opening day and the players were very friendly. Before the game started they were talking to kids in the stands, smiling at fans. They were trying to make up for the strike, which caused the previous year's World Series to be cancelled. Fans were pretty pissed.

One kid was in full Dodger uniform and thrilled to be talking to the players. He stood for the essential joy of the whole institution of baseball, and especially the joy of his own self.

I felt his joy and everywhere I turned I felt it, and in every breath of stadium air. The baseball in all its orbits -- grass high, waist high, sky high -- that white ball is concentrated joy because the whole game is about the presence of the white ball.

Sometimes the ball gets hit to you. This day Chipper Jones lined a foul ball right into my bare hands. The ball bounced out, but heck, even major leaguers drop line drives, right?

When that ball comes to you, you see it coming and it comes. It might slap your palm, sting, and fly out. But you've touched it. You know it. You've seen the ball is not only white but as it spins there is a tinge of red in the cloud of its spin.

Then for a fraction of a second as the ball slaps your hand you see the white ball is embossed with a red seam. The red seam, the ball flying away, the river of blood within the perfect thing that is you, the realization that you've collided with yourself ... and joy flying off everywhere.