Once you have emerged from the beer damp and shivered tunnel, the sun will swallow you and spit you out—no, I swear—and then the stadium will open up before you like a modern cathedral.  If you get there early you will see the regular worshippers scrambling over folded pews to offer their pure white, red-laced tokens up to the loping, confident athlete-gods just out of reach. Like a topographer, you will make your way over the peanut crackled terrain past—hold on, let me see your ticket—past the towering beacon post, up the stepped concrete ridges, to the loft of center field.  What’s that? No, these are glorious seats! High above the congregation you will peer down onto a manicured green religion, dusty dirt lanes and white ash lines that pave the way home. You may not be able to see his eyes narrow or his knuckles wring the wooden neck of the hefted bat but you will sure as hell hear the clap of whiplashed contact send that white prayer straight to the heavens, and it’s going, going!—