I greatly enjoyed this NYT story about a guy who flies from Kansas City to New York for every single Mets homestand...to sell cotton candy at Shea Stadium.  Magnificent obsession.

Speaking of Shea, I was there for the first time last night to see the Mets lose to the Dodgers in a somewhat disorganized game.  Fun to see David Wells pitch, though.

It was, with one exception, the first time I've paid to see a major-league baseball game since the 1994 strike.  (I know that the dollars flow to the same places, but I've preferred minor-league games since then -- cheaper to attend, you sit closer, and you feel less squeezed for every dime.  Plus, "Bull Durham" is inspiring.)  The one exception mentioned above was a Cubs-Cardinals game at Wrigley Field in 1999; I had to visit the Friendly Confines, and to see McGwire & Sosa slugging it out was great fun, even if it was the season after their race.

It was also an interesting game last night because it was Jewish Heritage Night at Shea.  A Jewish a cappella group sang before the game, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" was sung in Yiddish (!) during the seventh-inning stretch, the players were introduced with Hebrew lettering on the scoreboard (Moishe Alou, perhaps?) and somewhere on my camera's memory card I have photographic evidence of Mr. Met doing Israeli folk dances on top of the home dugout.