SPORTING LIFE: Just as my NEW YORKER subscription is about to run out...and just as I'm seriously contemplating *letting it* run out for the first time in maybe six or seven years, they hit me with Ben McGrath's excellent "Project Knuckleball," a meandering examination of the flutterball pitch and the hurlers who live by it. It's a great read if you have a moment (and if you have even a passing interest in sport). As a sports misfit myself (I was a soccer goalie and a breaststroker, both specialties that have long-standing associations with mental imbalance), I found myself dying to go out and perfect my own ghostball. If only I had somebody to throw the ball with. I'm working with my two-year-old on this, but thus far he's much more interested in "backerd" throws than in hitting Daddy in the hands.

(When I saw the Ben McGrath byline on the knuckleball piece it gave me pause at first. Luckily a quick Amazon.com search revealed that the pause-inspiring writer is actually Ben Marcus, the guy who's responsible for one of the most useless novels I've come across in this or any other decade, the appropriately titled po-mo wank-job that is SUPERBAD. Steer clear of Mr. Marcus or, if you like him, please to be explaining to me why.)

In the past couple years, I've found myself investing more time in two seemingly different sports: NASCAR and baseball. NASCAR is my new interest, born of a "just for laughs" fantasy league that, in stealth mode, ignited my passion for redneck racin'. The dynamic nature of the sport -- an entirely new event each weekend, new track, new strategy, new alliances and enemies -- really works for me, as does its inherent patriotism and aw-shucks humility. I thrilled to the 3-D NASCAR IMAX movie on its opening weekend, and I devoured the insider account MEN AND SPEED on a recent vacation.

If NASCAR is my new love, baseball is like a first girlfriend who, after losing track of her, shows up on your doorstep in her same old sundress, the years having done nothing but add magic to her smile. After a few strikes (as in 'work stoppages', not dead-center pitches), I had sort of given up on baseball, had stopped following the free-agent signings and the latest sensations. After realignment, I'd even lost track of which team went where.

But I found I couldn't boycott baseball; it was already too deep in me. I found myself imagining my old baseball cards -- the Ron Santo TRADED card, the way Milt May held the bat like a toothpick, the snapshot of the knuckleballer Wilbur Wood with a dozen fish on a stringer, the sheer gleaming mass of men like George Scott and Willie Stargell, the insouciant leer of the young Dusty Baker. I remembered hearing Jack Brickhouse's "Hey, hey!" and later Harry Caray's malaprops and "Holy Cow" and "Vizza-kye-EE-no!" And over the past two seasons, as my Cubs regained some measure of competitiveness, I jumped back in with both feet. Earlier this year Michael Lewis' excellent MONEYBALL offered me another entry point into the game, showing how my current vocation (research) is changing the game of baseball in grand and subtle ways.

With baseball and NASCAR alike, the more knowledge I gain the more fun it is to watch cars going around in circles and frustrated jocks taking miserable swipes at fluttering ghostballs for three hours at a stretch. What looks slow to some feels exquisite to the initiated. Trust me.

(UPDATE: A quick Googling reveals a cool old Chicago Trib piece on the knuckler, complete with a handy little animated GIF on how to throw it.)