The Cooperstown Dreams Park season is over as of last Friday and I, for one, am terribly saddened to see it end. Which might surprise some people.

Living within earshot of the place (or more accurately, about 1,500 feet from the park, since earshot is basically the entire county) I'd seem a prime candidate for one who would be thrilled to exist without the rambunctious 12-year-olds, bright lights and nightmarish traffic. I mean, the Dreams Park did nothing for me but delay my afternoon commute and make noise late at night, disrupting my sleep pattern on the rare occasions I went to bed before 11. Why should I care if they're gone?

The cheers, my friends. The cheers.

Picture this: you come home at night, exhausted after a long day of work. Dinner's boring, there's nothing but rubbish on the tube (no surprise), so you collapse in your bed hoping to fall asleep, resting just enough to get up and do it all again the next day.

Which is right when the cheering kicks in.

At first you're barely aware of anything, except the mild throbbing in your temples and the haze brought on by a late afternoon brewski. Then, as sleep slowly overtakes you, the sounds seep insidiously into your subconscious mind. Slowly but surely, you recognize it: A potent mixture of laughter, yelling and exuberant whoops of glee.

And it's all for you big fella.

At least, that's how it was interpreted in my apartment. Every night, I was getting the big hit, saving the game with a diving grab or laying down a perfect bunt, winning the game with a suicide squeeze in the bottom of the ninth. Fulfilling my dreams, one cheering fan at a time.

Or more accurately, finally fulfilling the potential I never actually reached in the real world of baseball.

You see, I played the great game of baseball in high school. My school, Jefferson Central, is small enough so that no-talent hacks like myself made the team, primarily because we needed bodies. And if ever the word "hack" was ever used more appropriately, I'll eat my mitt.

I may share my name with the most famous player from Mudville, but the only thing else we've got in common is the big whiff that happens when he swings his bat.

It's not that I was spectacularly bad. Our team was actually quite good, ranked in the state at one point. We had a great record, going roughly 12-4 and finally losing in the sectional championship, which we got into only after a fairytale victory over cross-town rival Stamford.

The problem I had, was that I peaked during the second game of the season.

In our first game, against Laurens, I came up for my second at-bat with the bases loaded. The game was still tied at zero in the third inning or so, and we were still wound pretty tight, looking for that first run to cross the plate. The coach took me to the side and repeated the same thing every coach has ever said to me, words I had never really understood.

"Look for your pitch."

So I did. Surprisingly, I saw it. My pitch. A big fat, meatball floating in over the middle of the plate.

Not really aware of what I was doing, I swung the bat. The ball sailed over the center fielder's head, over the center field fence and over the center of Wisconsin, for all I know. Grand slam.

But like I said, I peaked early and after the big home run, a double off the wall in the second game and a few scattered hits here and there, I was ineffective, to say the least. I don't remember the exact stats, but at one point in time mid-way through the season, I remember seeing that I was 17 for 34. That's 17 strikeouts, not hits, in 34 at-bats. Casey at the bat, indeed.

This summer at the Dreams Park however, I was 33-34, with 12 grand slams, 13 three-run blasts, eight solo shots and a grounder to short (nobody's perfect).

I made shoestring catches by the bucket and stole second, third and home on the few occasions I was walked. My team won every game and we won the championship week after week, not choking under the pressure or giving in to our fears of inadequacy.

It's been a week since I last heard the cheers, since we won a game. The team's fading back into memory now and I'm starting to wonder when I'll get to the plate again.

How long until next summer?