This is an amazingly good essay from Doug Glanville that I wish I had written about the timelessness and unstoppable march of time that is baseball and life.
https://dougglanville.substack.com/...say?r=funje&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
I just received my late brother-in-law's set of Cadaco All-Star Baseball games from his estate a couple of weeks ago. I unpacked them and suddenly I'm 7 again, sorting Johnny Mize and Mel Ott and Norm Cash and Birdie Tebbetts into teams, placing them on the cardboard spinner and remembering the results as if I hadn't played the game tens of thousands of times growing up. There are tens of old binders in the basement with my childish handwriting, scorecards of games played between players who haven't stepped on a baseball field in decades, or even been alive.
Every RIP means another player with a Cadaco disc has moved on. There are less than a handful from my original 60-player set still breathing. I have no idea what to do with binders but they've made every move with me since college, and I can turn to any page and recreate that game in my mind, almost 60 years later.
Cash was Gwen's favorite Tiger. Mine was **** McAuliffe, who was also in one of John's sets. Johnny Mize is buried about 20 miles away in his Georgia hometown of Demorest. But every time I spin the metal pointer, they're alive and standing next to me as if I've reversed time.
Baseball isn't linear. It's layered, with every game and season mirroring the ones before and ones to follow. And time goes backward just as easily as it goes forward. Until it's time for us all.
Pardon me while I set up the kitchen table tonight. I've got memories to make.
