Thankfulness is certainly what got me to this place. From the beginning of my writing to the moment I occupy now. And gratitude continues to ooze from my pores—but when I move my fingers across the keys to identify these feelings in some new and meaningful way, overused expressions dribble their way onto the page—and I backspace…Although thank you now seems the largest part of my life—an expanding circle, from the initial thank-you for baseball cards to the larger thanks of now—I still find myself unable to adequately express gratitude. And so, I turn to story.

     The blood was rushing to her head. A blush that began at her white stockinged kneecaps was coloring her face. It even looked as if the auburn hair, neatly pushed under a white dixie cup cap, was blushing too. Maybe it was the angle of her body that caused the flush, maybe not.

     The kiss had lasted longer than expected. In truth, she hadn’t expected it at all. Surprise gave way to acceptance and then segued into enjoyment as her lips melded with his. The muscular body held her up and pressed down…into hers. The blood began to pump in her ears. All she could hear was her heart. All she could feel were his lips, and the steady rising and falling of her chest against his. As her breathing slowed, her heart raced. She relaxed, and then with a rush of adrenaline squinched up her shoulders and pushed at his, signaling him to let her go. He straightened her from the swoop-down, bent-over-backwards position he had thrust her into a few moments before, and they stood facing each other in the middle of the busy boulevard.

     How long that kiss lasted always remained a mystery to her. He looked warmly but briefly into her eyes. The blood was still flowing like water through her ears. Unable to hear, she just managed to read his lips when they smiled and said, “Thanks.”

     Then the sailor rushed past her and took off down the street, running and waving his hand in the air. Abby was a bit dazed as she turned to watch him go. He zeroed in on another victim and swept her nearly off her feet, holding his newest prey in the now familiar bent-back embrace. Abby’s hearing returned as her fickle sailor finished with the other white clad nurse and continued his hunt down the busy sidewalk. “The war is over, the war is over,” he shouted as he moved through the teeming crowd. In San Francisco and all around the world, they were celebrating VJ day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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     Loads of forward moving over the past ten days—thinking, planning, listing, setting up, shooting, talking, filming, talking some more then breaking down and putting away—the talk was about baseball, Diamond Stars, and the Healing Power of Cardboard…

     Soon all of this activity will translate into images of me and my old baseball cards on You Tube…

     Life is curious. At times, I find myself unable to articulate my deeper feelings of being. Ones that have been stirred to the surface since connecting to the core of my nine-year-old's card collecting passion. Instead, I segue into a baseball cardboard patois that often leaves my non-card-obsessed friends yawning and looking for the nearest exit. Now, I wonder if I have become over sensitized about Being Boring…

     During our two You Tube video shoot sessions, I found that a part of me was freed from that fear—my belief that…no one really wants to listen to this cardboard conversation...Instead I feel hope surging that what I found along with my old baseball cards and what it is doing for me might encourage others to look at their lost connections. I believe that most of us carry passions that touched deep at some point of our lives but were swept away along with a nameless something that needed to be forgotten or kept secret. I am grateful for grace given that brought me back to this lost passion, and for the opportunity to complete this early story that began before the storm.

     I believe I am finding my way home.

Bless all victims of violence on this November 22, 2013. Many of us do recall and all of us may remember fifty years ago today. I hold my thoughts close, for those whose lives                                                   are cut short and I grieve with the survivors.
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     One of my favorite baseball stories comes out of Baseball's World Tour 1913-14.

     After the 1913 season came to a close, portions of the New York Giants and Chicago White Sox baseball clubs, plus other invited players, set out across the US, playing each other in games that began in Cincinnati, Ohio and ended in Portland, Oregon (the games scheduled in Tacoma and Seattle were rained out...) before departing from Victoria, British Columbia for points east.

     But my story does not take place in some exotic overseas locale, it happens in Oxnard, California...

     Giants outfielder, Fred Snodgrass, resident of Ventura, invited his teammates to stop, en-route from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and play one game in the ballpark on the corner of Wooley Road and E Street, in the neighboring town of Oxnard. It is not clear how the residents discovered that Philadelphia Phillie third baseman, Hans Lobert, a player noted for his speed on the base-paths, would be a part of the New York Giant team for this tour. But once they did find out—a plan was hatched that would not only add money to their coffers, while providing extra entertainment for the crowd, but it also might assure that a large passel of cowboys, who loved a gamble more than the game, would come and watch baseball.

     Thanks to Lawrence Ritter's THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES (audio book) you now have an opportunity to spend this 100th Anniversary listening to my favorite story from the lips of Hans--John B. Lobert ("Little" Honus)—himself...  Just click below:
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     As I reach back to my beginnings to focus on my earliest memories of becoming, I have realized that the first place I felt belonging was baseball. There was family, of course. The immediate and the wild Greek relatives that would surround me when I was with my Grandmother, Annika, in Chicago. But with family I was assigned a part to play—with baseball I could chose my own. It was personal, this relationship, and the baseball cardboard I could hold in my hand—made it mine.
     Imagine, having portable pieces of your passion, to carry around, show off, read, trade, memorize and play with. And all it took to gather more joy and excitement was a little ingenuity. A pack cost a nickel. That was two or three deposit bottles (depending if they were 2 or 3 cent bottles) Or you could take your chances and flip/lag for a few more. That kid across the street had seven Moe Drabowskys—how hard could it be to talk him out of one? And the number of things you could do with those cards once you got them...was limited only by your imagination. The time I would spent with that 1962 Koufax or reading the back of a ’57 Billy Loes...looking at those stats! I learned math off the backs of 1957 Topps cards.
     But even beyond all the personal involvement and the intimate kind of power that these cardboard pieces provided—there was something else. Something special and intimate, that seemed to slip away once the cards were forgotten, only to return when that shoebox found its way back to me in 1989…
     Next: is an edited version of a remembrance I sent to my OBC friends back in the 1990's when I was trying to find a way to express my thanks to them for bringing back the innocence, intimacy and passion that I had attached to my cardboard…


                                                       that feeling...
     Scuffing over sidewalks to the Westward Ho Market the young boy marked his steps towards packaged treasure. No searching through ivy for 2 and 3 cent'er deposit bottles this week for in his hand he held two silver coins—fifty-cents! Corduroy cuffs punctuated heel scuffing sounds as the boy traveled towards a rendezvous with people who filled him up.
     Moving into the market he passed an overflowing display of double Butterfinger bars, fought the urge to pick one up, continued and then stopped before his cathedral of cardboard. One hand was too small to hold the ten packs his half-dollar would buy, so he let the coins slide into a pocket and grabbed. He walked with purpose to the register, stacked packs, coins out, ring, drawer, clink, bag, receipt—and he was out the door.
     Retracing his steps toward home, holding the less than lunch size bag in his left hand and a fresh pack in his right—he ripped with his teeth.
     “Got 'em—got 'em—don't got 'em—got 'em”, his cadence sounded. The “got 'em's” were far ahead. Plopping down on an available lawn the boy pushed through the fifty-cards once more, pulling out every Dodger, while sliding gum into his mouth and shirt pocket.
     Three more Lee Walls another Roseboro, another Wally Moon! Still no Snider, Koufax and no Maury Wills..! The bag bottomed out and the little one was feeling down. For good measure the boy turned the bag over and shook. His reward cascaded to the grass...
     Don Drysdale! “All right!”
     Holding the Drysdale close, feeling, reading, all his senses alive—a contented smile spread across his face—and he got that feeling...
     Pushing through the front door, Monday, after work, the sagging man dropped keys, change and mail, on the dining room table, sat and sorted bills from junk. But a couple of envelopes he set aside. Bills opened and junk torn up, he attended to the ones he'd saved for last.
     Gently tearing open each he sifted through the contents and spoke. “Don't got 'em—don't got 'em—don't got 'em—don't got 'em— DON'T GOT 'EM!” Card after card—Dodger after Dodger.
     The man straightened as he looked, touched, read, smelled and even tasted. A contented smile changed his face—and he got that feeling...
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