Stories that take the sting out of bad baseball

The GIANTS were being badly beaten yesterday, but I didn't want to quit listening to the radio broadcast: Listening to baseball -- even bad baseball -- is a powerful symbol of summer. I can't switch it off: It's too evocative of lazy, youthful days spent with my radio playing outside in CALIFORNIA.
So I kept listening but took my mind off the carnage on the diamond by reaching for some old BASEBALL BOOKS.
Here is my favorite baseball story, a tale about the NEW YORK METS related by the incomparable ROGER ANGELL in his classic, "FIVE SEASONS":
During the early stages of their terrible first summer, in 1962, their center fielder, Richie Ashburn, suffered a series of frightful surprises while going after short fly balls, because he was repeatedly run over by the shortstop, the enthusiastic but modestly talented Elio Chacon.
After several of these encounters, Ashburn took Chacon aside and carefully explained that, by ancient custom, center fielders were allowed full freedom to catch all flies they could get to and signal for. The collisions and near-collisions and dropped fly balls continued exactly as before, and Ashburn eventually concluded that Chacon, who spoke very little English, simply didn't understand what it meant when he saw his center fielder waving his arms and yelling "Mine! Mine! I got it!" Richie thought this over and then went to Joe Christopher, a bilingual teammate on the Mets, and asked for help. "All you have to do is say it in Spanish," Christopher said. "Yell out 'Yo la tengo!' and Elio will pull up. I'll explain it to him, too -- OK? You won't have any more trouble out there." "Yo la tengo?" Ashburn said. "That's it," Christopher said.
Before the next game, Ashburn saw Chacon in the clubhouse.
"Yo la tengo?" Richie said tentatively. "Si, si! Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!" Chacon said, smiling and nodding his head. "Yo la tengo!" Ashburn said. They shook hands. In the second or third inning that night, an enemy batter lifted a short fly to center. Ashburn sprinted in for the ball. Chacon thundered out after it. "Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!" Richie shouted. Chacon jammed on the brakes and stopped, happily gesturing for Ashburn to help himself. Richie reached up to make the easy catch -- and was knocked flat by Frank Thomas, the Mets' left fielder.
Stories like that one never fail to make me smile, and they take the sting out of bad baseball.