Boyhood Scrapbook

This is an essay from 16 years ago.

After my first marriage broke up, I moved my stuff to a house across town. Everything was jumbled together in boxes, so for a while I couldn't find anything. Then, I moved again a month later, this time into the house where I would spend most of the next year.

Slowly, as I unpacked my boxes, I sorted through old letters and books, some reaching back to my childhood. My son, then about 8, had just become a big baseball fan, rooting for the Giants, playing little league, and collecting baseball cards. I told him about my big collection back in the Fifties, when I was a kid.

He came over to spend the night one Saturday and I dug through my boxes, just to see whether any baseball-related stuff had survived the many moves I'd made since childhood. Out tumbled this old scrapbook, circa 1958, with prime baseball cards of Willy Mays, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams, among others, glued inside.

This turned out to be pretty much all that was left of my boyhood collections (I once had collections of virtually everything -- stamps, bottle caps, stones, shells, seaglass, driftwood, bullet shells, bones, you name it). One battered scrapbook with boyish scribbles and notes throughout.

For some reason I had carefully retyped the 1958 baseball season stats; an indication of how much I was into baseball at that time.

Baseball and numbers, real and imagined, these were the elements dominating my fantasy life when I was little. Two other things have showed up over the decades — investigative reporting and the opposite sex. Add it all up and --presto! -- you get the general outlines of one boy's life story. 

TODAY’s STORY LINKS:

• Justice Department releases unredacted Barr memo detailing decision not to charge Trump with obstructing Russia probe (CNN)

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• Is Biden's student debt forgiveness fair? (BBC)

• Student loan forgiveness could help more than 40 million (AP)

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• Judge orders release of redacted affidavit in FBI search of Mar-a-Lago estate (WP)

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• Biden Urged to Act Swiftly on Ukraine Nuclear Plant (WSJ)

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• The United States’ Unvarnished Cruelty in Afghanistan (Undark)

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• Twitter is facing more employee departures, company executives told staff, as leaders sought to address multiple challenges, including whistleblower allegations and a legal battle with billionaire Elon Musk. Employee attrition is currently 18.3%, Twitter executives said during a company-wide meeting. (Reuters)

• A Tennessee police officer who was involved in the brutal arrest and beating of a young Black man in a small town in July had a documented history of excessive force and other departmental violations, according to records obtained by HuffPost's Phillip Jackson. The officer had been reprimanded for physical violence and having sex in his patrol car. [HuffPost]

• After 22 years, a rural Michigan town defunds its library over an LGBTQ book (WP)

• Taxing Tech Companies for the Failure of the News Industry Is Just Unfair (Politico)

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• Hero Conservationist Convinces Suicidal Galapagos Penguin To Put Down Gun (The Onion)