(2007) It’s grey and gloomy here. And I’m stuck in the concrete workshop anyway. But the Red Sox game will be on the radio to pass the time. I don’t care if they win or lose, really. Never much did. In my youth only little children and the odd addled adult would plaster their lives with the memorabilia of an athletic team. Baseball cards and autographs were fun, and so: worthless. Valuable and fun? Can’t be done. Choose one.

My mind drifts back to the game wafting out of the crummy AM transistor radio on a lazy summer afternoon while my father mows the nasty brown patch of grass he kept in front of our house. We sit occasionally for a short moment in the shade of the big pine together on cheap lawnchairs made from aluminum tubing and nasty fibrous strapping that cut into your legs.

Ken Coleman’s voice would wash over us, and the polyglot names of each of the batters would come in their turn, and Dad would wordlessly give me a sip of his beer right from the cold, steel can.

Hi, neighbor; have a ‘gansett.

I wonder if my own son will ever remember anything so fondly about me as that.