Tom Shroder of The Washington Post contributed this sweet, nostalgic piece about discoerving a long-forgotten piece of his childhood.
As I lectured my mom on this subject recently, arguing for ruthlessness in the disposition of boxes filled with old stuff, I came across a little cardboard notebook. Labeled “Official Baseball Score Book,” it opened to reveal page after page of classic baseball scorecards — columns of little boxes, each with a diamond in the middle, on which cryptic scribbles and symbols could record the happenings of a game. Only the first few pages were filled in with what, I soon realized, was almost certainly the only surviving record of my 12-and-under Little League team, the Apes. That unfortunate team moniker I had blotted from memory, but the names in the batting lineup — Feldman, Astor, Tagney, Shroder — I could recite perfectly more than 40 years after the fact.
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I realize now that it was, possibly, the most sublime triumph of my life. Nearly half a century later, the memory still makes me glow.
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