Not all the time, though. Some days yes, some days no.

I had purchased a seat on the ground level of the stadium, but felt like going up to the top stands just for the hell of it. I got up there and started walking up the steps to get a high seat, and didn’t even realize that I was gripping the railings so tightly, or that my stomach was starting to turn upside down any time I looked down at the field while still standing. I might have looked to an observer like I was having some kind of attack, or like I was falling down drunk.

It was fine once I got into a seat, but man I did not want to get up from that seat. That was the greatest, most perfect seat in Yankee Stadium that day. I felt rooted there.

You don’t realize how paralyzing irrational fears are until their effects no longer consume you.

By the time I got out of the stadium and stood on the 161st Street subway platform it felt like I had just come out of a trance, or some altered state. My back still felt tight, but it was loosening. My palms chilled in that way they do after sweating profusely for long, long hours and then suddenly not sweating any more. Everything from my face to my stomach felt like it was unraveling from having been twisted and squeezed by some giant mechanical contraption.

But I know full well that I could go there tomorrow and not have any reaction at all. Walking up there would be like walking on the sidewalk outside.

Some days are like that.

I think I’ve gotten so used to the way announcers package the game on TV and radio that the real live game just doesn’t interest me much.

I’ve been watching a lot of baseball this season. My two favorite teams, The Yankees and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, are pretty much at opposite ends of the major league universe. Yankees are the oldest and highest paid to the Devil Rays’ youngest and cheapest team. The Yankees started the season as the team to beat, the Rays had and continue to have low expectations.

I started following the Rays the last time I was in Tampa, and was impressed. They are a much better-looking team than their record would indicate.

My only hope is that they do not turn into a team where the players are just auditioning for other teams. It would be great to see the team develop a personality over time.

I follow the Rays mostly over the MLB.com RealAudio feed, and the Yankees I listen to on the radio and watch on the new YES Network.

The YES Network is this new cable channel that carries almost nothing but Yankees games and Yankees-related programming 24 hours a day (with an occasional New Jersey Gladiators Arena Football game, for some reason).

I like the YES Network, especially for the Yankees Classic games. But for live games I would much rather listen to Charley Steiner and John Sterling, the radio announcers on WCBS 880 AM.

In fact almost across the board I’d rather listen to sports announcers on the radio instead of on TV. Radio announcers always seem to have more of substance to say.

After Shane Spencer’s grand slam the other night, for instance, the YES Network announcers carried the narrative of the moment by saying nothing, and just showing the visuals of the crowd going wild and the players running the bases. But the radio guys communicated the significance and excitement of the big play so much more effectively.

What drives me crazy about the YES Network, though, is that I can’t listen to the game on the radio and watch it on TV. This is because the radio broadcast is about 1 or 2 seconds ahead of the TV. So the radio guys have already called the play before I’ve even seen it on the TV. It’ll make you batty.

I’ve learned to work with this problem, though, and have come up with a kind of a balance.

What I do is I turn radios on to WCBS in every room of this apartment, but turn the TV up in the living room so that when I’m in the living room I can’t hear the radios in the other 3 rooms.

At other times I will follow the game in a different way.

This is my new technique, which is still being perfected. I sit on the couch and turn the TV volume down to nothing, so I can barely hear the radio from the kitchen. When there’s a big play, the radio announcer will raise his voice to a shout. From the living room I can hear that the radio announcer is shouting, thus indicating that a big play is happening. But I usually can not distinguish what the announcer is saying, so I don’t know the play.

This amorphous cue tells me that I have 1 or 2 seconds to look at the TV to see the play that’s about to happen. I can at least watch it knowing it will be a big play but not knowing precisely what that play will be.

It would be important if you were making Yankees logo cookies. Would you use your cookie batter squirt gun to do the N first?

Where is the gospel of the Yankees logo that I can consult about this matter?

I’m going with the N first, and then the Y on top, since I think I’ve seen it that way more often than not, and since N comes before Y in “NY.” But are chocolate chips allowed?

And why do they always say that it’s Pitcher A vs. Pitcher B? The two pitchers never even face each other (unless the pitcher takes an at-bat). They say this in football, too. Quarterback A vs. Quarterback B, even though in football it’s more of a certainty that those two players will never even be on the field at the same time.

It’s really just the status of the pitcher in baseball that I’m not at peace with. And I need peace anywhere I can get it.

I can’t stand to watch Ted Lilly pitch. His posture and rhythm are twisted. It’s as if he’s about to drive himself into the pitchers mound like a corkscrew. The first time I saw him pitch a 8-inning 1-hit game I didn’t trust his abilities. He was throwing crazy pitches but the batters were swatting at any damn thing. And after the game he back-handedly blamed the rest of the team for his problems. I just don’t like this guy

Joe Torre calls Lilly “unpredictable,” which is a diplomatic way of saying he’s inexperienced and unreliable. Soriano is “unpredictable” but he doesn’t make excuses, even when he has good reason to.

My favorite baseball stats are the On Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage. OBP indicates how often a batter draws a walk or gets hit, and Slugging roughly speaking is a stat that illustrates how many times a batter hits for more than a single. I think these stats should be referenced as often as the usual Batting Average.

A team stat that I find meaningful is the Men Left On Base percentage. It illustrates the highness of hopes crashing into reality.