As dumb as it sounds, I'm starting to miss the games.

I miss walking my dog and listening to Bob Uecker joke on the radio, miss the complaining after too many strikeouts, miss the pointless over-analyzing of the team's starting pitching prospects.

It's September, and I miss pennant races the Brewers aren't even in. I miss carefree weekend mornings and the sports page over coffee. I guess I just miss the normalcy of it all.

I miss all these things relatively, of course. My life didn't change because of them, and I am cognizant enough to realize they don't truly matter; what does at times like this?

No one needs to be told how much last week hurt or how things are different now, and certainly not anyone who lost a loved one. Today, none of us are sure what should happen next. We wake up, we work, we grieve, and we move on.

Part of that moving on is sport, and it's really no more or less frivolous than it ever has been; it just seems like it. But today, the larger-context insignificance of wins and losses is so much clearer. Maybe as part of the terror's aftermath, we can take away that kernel of wisdom and cultivate it.

The need to filter disasters such as last week's through our own personal prisms is overwhelming, whether by putting the games we play into proper perspective, or challenging our own individual values and priorities. It is part of the growth that pain and loss spawn.

But it is not done in a day or a week. Watching a baseball team return to the field is not an isolated catharsis, just the beginning of one return among life's many. Gathering at Miller Park with thousands of fans to cheer a game will undoubtedly feel different, and it should.

Whether or not our nation will truly change because of last week's terrorism is still undetermined. But have we changed? Have you and I? Should we? Will we?

There are only questions right now, some no doubt much bigger than others. But in a perceptible, fundamental way, the way we deal with small ones such as sport is indicative of, and relevant to, how we solve the larger.