Step Into 2012 From Way Back

Happy New Year! We look forward to an exciting 2012 here at Faith and Fear, even if we have to create the excitement ourselves. But isn’t that what Mets fans do when the Mets don’t necessarily contribute as much fun as they could? And while you’re waiting for pitchers, catchers and trustees to report to Spring Training, may I suggest a few well-chosen steps into baseball to get this year started briskly? Our friend Peter Laskowich, New York and baseball historian par excellence is conducting one of his all-absorbing walking tours of Brooklyn on Monday morning, 10 o’clock. The subject is our National Pastime and its deep Kings County roots. “Most of baseball comes from Brooklyn,” Peter writes. “The borough devoted itself to baseball from the start, fostering all three of the great early teams, inventing the curveball and the bunt, and establishing the craft of pitching. For Brooklyn, a proud city absorbed into New York in 1898, a baseball tea...