It is designed to break your heart.

I think I'm having a baseball renaissance.

Not that it ever really went away -- I loved baseball before I even loved Carolina basketball, and even with the basketball, there are days when the game is simply a vehicle for everything else I love, the living breathing weeping cheering Carolina nation, you know? But baseball, man, baseball I love for the game. The sound of the bat, the 6-4-3 double play, watching a really good pitcher break a curve a full foot and a half for a called third strike.

I'd kind of forgotten that. shep. suckered me back into it last summer with her fantasy league, and after 10 years -- from when they broke my heart with Davey Johnson, through the photos of Moose holding up the Yankees jersey that tapdanced on my soul, to Bedard and Guthrie and Loewen and Cabrera this year, smart good young pitchers who love the game -- I almost sort of got back together with the Orioles last year. We're having a trial reconciliation. If they don't trade Brian Roberts or Nick Markakis or Adam Loewen or Eric Bedard away, we might get back together for good.

The thing is, see, I feel like baseball's the only game where college and the pros are the same. It's the same game, 90 feet between bases and watch the hitters who pull to the left, and the NBA bears no resemblance to college basketball for me and I couldn't give less of a crap about football, so. Baseball it is.

I forgot about how much I loved baseball, though; I became a Cubs fan in Chicago because Wrigley was right there and my friends had become Cubs fans. Gone from Chicago, I am less and less invested as the team I loved four, five years ago is traded away, injured for good, just gone for whatever reason. The Cubs were like that guy you sleep with while you're taking a break from the love of your life -- it's pretty hot sex and it satisfies a craving, but it's not a forever thing. (Except with the Big Z. The Big Z and me, we're forever, even if I did dump him off my fantasy roster. He deserved it. He was sucking. I HAVE NO REGRETS, JOHN MAINE IS AWESOME.) Being a Cubs fan for me was never quite about being a baseball fan.

And in some ways, rooting for the Heels this year was not quite about being a baseball fan, not at the beginning -- and then, suddenly, under the lights in the Bosh and the sunlight in Omaha, it was. Wishing for Dustin Ackley to find his slumpbuster. Picking apart Robert Woodard's herky-jerky motion on the mound, skeptical no matter how good he is or how many times they say someone taught him that way on purpose. Trying to find the exact hole in FedEx's swing. Watching the outfield shift, watching Seth Williams go ass over teakettle and come up with the ball, spitting grass and hat six feet from where he landed.

Plus I currently own both the AL leaders in wins, two of the top three in AL strikeouts, the second leading AL era, the AL stolen bases leader, and the NL leader in batting average on my fantasy team, which helps. (The fact that I willing gave Jake Peavy to shep. burns me daily. DAILY, I TELL YOU. But I love her, and she loves Jake, and so. I think I was still drunk at 10 a.m. on a Saturday when I agreed to that. I remember saying, "But only if I can find someone awesome to replace him." CC Sabathia is awesome, but he is not nearly as hot as Peavy. And also he got shelled this afternoon and he's on notice.) Fantasy baseball might be sort of dumb, you can keep your opinions on that to yourself, but it makes me pay attention to the game in way that nothing else ever has; not my Orioles, not just the Cubs, the game.

And I walked over to the Bosh on Monday, linked my fingers in the gates that won't be there this time next year because they're tearing it down and building a park like this program deserves and just looked at the field all empty. And tonight, shep. and I, a little tipsy on beer and Jack Daniels and definitely flush with the cool, clear evening, walked out there again, hooked our fingers in the chain link fences, peered into the batting cages, tried to figure out if we climbed into the stadium, just to sit in the dugout and stand on the mound, could we climb out again. (The answer was no, we could not, and also we didn't want to be banned for life when campus security caught us.) For long moments in the Sunday night game during the regional at the beginning of June, nobody I cared about on the field and it wasn't about Carolina at all, it was just about wet grass and the halos on the lights and shep. counting balls and strikes on the backs of the rosters crammed in my scorebook while I stood in line for more bottled water.

I love Carolina basketball, but I just love baseball.

I can't stop thinking about baseball, like I go to sleep thinking of pickoff moves and doubles to right center and wake up thinking about how Woodard's hitch will play in a rotation with Jake Peavy and in between I think about Josh Horton's hands and Andrew Carignan's 94-mile-an-hour fastball and Eric Bedard's run support. I'm in the middle of a stretch where I feel like I'm not just having a bad week, I'm having a bad life, but then I think about the hit-and-run and somehow it's better. Baseball, man. It's designed to break your heart -- but sometimes it's the thing that saves you.