Like Phillip Marlowe patiently and forcefully scouring the streets of Raymond Chandler's hot and corrupt Los Angeles trying to get to the heart of a criminal matter, I've found myself searching hard and long these last four months for evidence that baseball, in its quasi post-steroid state, is indeed worthy of my concentrated interest once again.

Substantiation has been very elusive thus far. The steady and inexorable trickle of scandal and embarrassment that has befallen the sport over the last decade had turned into a gulf seemingly too wide to navigate. But there are encouraging signs.

Though I earn my keep writing about baseball on occasion, my main muse for my work is tennis. And there is no more intense a period in the sport than the six weeks from the start of the French Open to Wimbledon's end. During this interval I pay scant mind to baseball - my first love in sports - as my attention is riveted to the clay and grass. And these past several years have been a truly splendid time to be a follower of tennis as this extended harvest in the spring and early summer has yielded extraordinary happenings.

But after Wimbledon, which conveniently coincidences with the All Star break, I take stock of what has transpired through the first half of the MLB campaign. And since New York is my base, the Yankees are the starting-off point of my observations - and hopefully insight - for my review of the season to date. But inspiration this year is most decidedly not issuing forth from Gotham. To the contrary, the Yankees have become tired and dull, hardly a specimen worthy of excitement or joyous examination.

It's hard to say when this long-in-coming Yankee ennui finally set-in and became manifest for this writer and fan. Maybe it's this perpetual spring that has overtaken the East Coast, where there's been no visible, sweaty signs of summer. After all summer in New York is supposed to be sultry and humid which is a perfect accompaniment for the slow, sluggish and at times tedious pace of our national pastime.

But no, there's really only one place to start and that's with Alex Rodriguez. When the revelations about his steroid use surfaced just before the start of spring training, it was the final nail in his coffin of dislike that he has occupied since he became a Yankee. Never loved from the start, A-Rod has done nothing to diminish his reputation as a brilliant but transparent and deeply flawed athlete who is a non-clutch playoff performer. For I'd guess a majority of Yankee fans, A-Rod's presence on the team since his arrival in 2004 marked the end of the Era of Good Feeling, most personified by Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera.

And then there's the stadium. The public was at first intimidated by Yankee management with a threat to flee the city and then bamboozled with the sham of public financing for an organization (some estimate it runs up to $4 billion over the next 30 years) not wanting for cash. But hey this is Bloomberg's New York, where its reputation as a money-first, power hungry kingdom has sadly never been more accurate and profound. Speaking of our mayor - uh excuse me, king - he has proved that he's done his homework and has followed the formula for success that the Yankees perfected; first he bought his title and now he tells us meager and humble citizens that we need him for another term, that we can't live without him because otherwise our city will fall.

Regarding the stadium, it's not just the obscene cost of tickets that has been documented for months now. Rather it's the cold, corporate and consumer aspects to the massive structure that is such an affront to baseball sensibilities. It's as if the stadium is an afterthought to the mall that it is contained within. Give me the green of Wrigley Field any day. And to avoid charges of raging nostalgia, I'll take nearly any of the new stadiums that I've had the pleasure of seeing over the new Yankee home - Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Detroit, etc. Unfortunately New York has a way of obliterating any and all esthetic instincts when building sports venues - just think of the US Open and Arthur Ashe Stadium which is a most uncomfortable and miserable setting for a fan to enjoy tennis.

Now, what to do when faced with this dilemma of loving a sport at its core but suffering from a localized cast of burn-out? Find inspiration elsewhere of course. In his revealing and superbly written autobiography Chronicles, Bob Dylan confesses that he felt useless and used up near the end of the 1980's. He wondered aloud if he'd ever find that impulse and illumination to guide him to further creativity. Dylan then speaks of how he rediscovered that fertile instinct by accident when listening to a local jazz band in an empty bar just north of San Francisco. It wasn't forced, it just happened. It was an instructive passage.

So gradually over the last couple of months I've searched for my own reason to believe again in baseball. And by coincidence I, like Dylan, found my justification for once again watching baseball by accident, in the Bay Area. More specifically, in the person of Tim Lincecum.

Suffering from a sleepless June night I decided to turn on the TV and watch sports highlights hoping to induce slumber. What I didn't expect was to be so taken in by the seemingly routine recap of a San Francisco Giants game. I had seen Lincecum pitch on several occasions over the last two years but watching his bizarre and singular motion on this night was revelatory. Somehow, nocturnal sightings and realizations are always suffused with a greater degree of clarity than daytime ruminations. And for those of us on the Atlantic side of this country, even though we have instant access to everything at all times now, we're still a bit in the dark at moments when it comes to happenings on the left coast.

Watching Lincecum on those highlights I thought this guy is great - not only is he confounding hitters in the most unusual fashion but he seems to be enjoying himself. There was an absolute purity about him. With his ridiculously youthful looks and happy demeanor he seemed to be personifying those adjectives that baseball should conjure up - childhood, individuality, decency, wizardry, enchantment. From that moment on, I've vowed to watch every game that Lincecum hurls.

After viewing those highlights my thoughts returned to the Yankees. More precisely, why can't the Yankees ever seem to have players like Lincecum on their roster? It always appears to be the other teams that grow and nurture this type of player, so imbued with enthusiasm and freedom. Think of the late Mark Fidrych in the 1970's or Ken Griffey, Jr. when he first came into the league. Are the Yankees just too august to develop such athletes? Is it just too serious and monetary an affair here in the Big Apple that arrests this personality type? Obvious questions furnish obvious answers.

To be sure there are several other great players and stories this year. Perhaps none more impressive than the truly awesome offensive numbers that Albert Pujols is once again accumulating (steroid-free, we plead). And even though I don't root for the Yankees anymore I can't help but follow Derek Jeter's and Rivera's continued, consistent performances.

But for this fan, I've gone West - in fact, right into the former heart of the steroid beast in San Francisco, to reignite my belief in the power and beauty of baseball.