"I remember going to games in the late 60s, which were not so painful because expectations were so low. Jake Gibbs at the plate with a man on was cause for excitement..."

From John M...

"I remember going to games in the late 60s, which were not so painful because expectations were so low. Jake Gibbs at the plate with a man on was cause for excitement. Tickets were pretty cheap. I think a box seat behind the dugout was under five bucks (memory plays tricks, though). 

"But the best thing about it was, you could wander to a game without tickets and pick up a few of those boxies from one of the ticket windows just before game time. And the other best thing was, there were so few people in the stands sometimes that you could hear everything--the players' chatter, the umps' conversations, the sounds of ball hitting glove and bat with amazing clarity. And instead of being pounded with crap music and idiotic scoreboard videos and games, all you got was Eddie Layton pumping out an often tuneless but bouncy tune on the organ, with the sound drifting in and out and around the ballpark depending on which ways the breeze was blowing. If we could only reach those depths again.

"Not that I don't want to win a ring, but the past 17 years or so have been excruciating (2009 excepted). It's interesting when a team is incredibly good or incredibly bad. Everything in the middle, even if it's near but not at the top, is a study in frustration and mediocrity of various levels, kind of like what Utz must feel when faced with Wise original chips. Extremes are fun, and we can't seem to reach either end of the stick. 

"What I wouldn't give for a team that had the sense of humor to throw a Folly Floater now and then. Lousy or great are, for me, the best seasons there can be. If it wasn't for Showalter's scowling Puritan visage this year, I coulda rooted for the Orioles, but they took all of the fun out of sucking wind. Too bad. After all, the Babe was from Baltimore, and the Highlanders came to New York when William Devery and Frank Farrell bought the (real) Baltimore Orioles and brought them to Hilltop Park.

"Ah, the good old days."