Casey was at the bat, but who was on deck?

I'm not a big reader. Unlike other friends of mine who devour books left and right, I'm not one of those people. I didn't read The Da Vinci Code until almost a year after everyone was talking about it. I still haven't read any of the Harry Potter books (though that is something I'd like to eventually do.)

Making matters worse for me is when I do read a book, it's not typically anything any of my friends are reading. Probably the only book in the last two years I've read that anyone I know might have read is Bill Simmons' "Now I Can Die in Peace," a collection of columns he wrote about the highs (the 2004 World Series) and lows (the 2003 American League Championship Series in which they lost to the Yankess in Game Seven thanks to a home run by Aaron F&#ing Boone) of being a Boston Red Sox fan. (Longtime fans may remember that I got my copy of the book autographed.) And even at that, there's maybe one or two people who I know who might have read that.

As I've said before, for some reason magazines don't really count when people ask what you've read recently. This despite the fact that Tom Verducci is a brilliant storyteller. Verducci is a baseball writer for Sports Illustrated and has reached the "is he in here" status for me. That is, when a new issue of SI arrives, the first thing I do is look to see if there are any pictures of Maria Sharapova in a bikini and then look to see if Verducci has written anything.

His piece several years ago about spending a few days as one of the "players" with the Toronto Blue Jays is still some of the best writing I've ever read, present company excluded, of course. Even when he's a little off his game, as he was, I thought, when he chronicled his experience working as a major league umpire in a spring training game earlier this year, he still is brilliant. (For those wondering, he's got an article in this week's issue about Hank Aaron that makes me hang my head in shame for calling myself a writer.)

Even now, the book I'm currently reading, "The Last Nine Innings" is a look at the scientific and statistical revolution that began in baseball in the mid-1980s and has revolutionized the way people look at the game.

And that brings me to my point. Over the past two years, I've been reading (or, in some cases, rereading) books devoted to the game of baseball. From Michael Lewis' "Moneyball" (a book used in some business classes in colleges across the country) to Buzz Bissinger's "Three Nights in August" (Bissinger, by the way, also wrote "Friday Night Lights," the book that the movie and subsequent television show is based on) to Buster Olney's "Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty."

While I'm by no means a genius (as evidenced by the fact I had to look up how to spell that word), I'm fairly intelligent. I graduated with honors from both high school and college. I've scored well on standardized tests, and frankly, I do decent at Jeopardy when I watch. So what compels me to spend an inordinate amount of free time to a game that boils down to a guy hitting a ball with a stick and then running in a square?

For years, I was embarrassed to admit that I REALLY enjoyed the game of baseball. That kind of devotion to a sport is something for awkward teenage boys who needed something to channel all their energy into since they're no good with the ladies. Grown men don't spend their time analyzing statistics to get an advantage for their fantasy team (which, for those interested, is not going well this year) or participate in online chats on ESPN.com about the game.

But now I'm 28-years old. I haven't outgrown this phase. It is what it is. I'm a baseball fan in a land obsessed with football. I'm the Monkeys' fan in the Beatles' era, the 98 Degrees fan in the Backstreet Boys era. What's more, I don't care anymore. Sure it's unlikely that I'll find someone who wants to discuss if Mike Matheny is a catching genius (I didn't have to look it up that time) as a chapter 3-3 of "Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game is Wrong" discusses.

Sure, I'll never be able to talk about the latest bestselling novel at a cocktail party, but will those people at the party know why bunting a runner from first to second actually reduces the odds of your team scoring in that inning? Actually, I hope those people do, because then we could ditch the party and go find a game on.

I'd write more, but Baseball Tonight is coming on ESPN soon.

(On an unrelated note, look for the "big" announcement on Thursday. In fact, I've already written the post, but I'm waiting for a few more things to be done before I post it.)