by Doug Fahrendorff
Last week
My brother returned
My copy of
The 1959 Mutual Baseball Almanac.
He had given me the book for my birthday
That year.
I paged through the articles
Describing how to play each position:
Roberts on pitching
Campanella catching
Musial the outfield
Statistics of yesterdays heroes
The book a mirror
Into a time long past
When baseball was still
Only a game.
.
Posted 7/1/2009
I think that year should be 1954. I picked that book up for $1 at a used book store in 1977, and it’s still a fun read, along with the 1951 edition of The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball.