Published March 28, 2020

Chris Dahl, director of communications for the Major League Baseball Players Association and a longtime friend of mine through a professional network that predates Facebook, inspired this blog post. All it took was this March 25 status at Mark Zuckerberg’s hangout.

Edited to add: Well, looks like you can’t view it anymore, but if memory serves, it was an invitation to post a baseball-related photo.

I posted the first baseball photo that came to mind.

But first I had to look for it.

Found it! A scanned version of an actual, physical photograph!

It’s an official team photo of an American Legion Baseball team that featured a stealth Carly in the outfield. This ball club was Louisiana state runner-up, coming within one victory of winning the state championship.

I enjoyed the responses from my Facebook friends, which led to me describing one of two baseballs still in my possession. It’s the one at the top of this blog post, and you can see that it’s a few years old. (It’s from the season after the one the team photo above played in.)

There’s a story there. You knew that. My barber at the time, one of several delightful men in my life named Joe, had told me about the time Willie Mays hit four home runs in one game. This feat had made a big impression on Joe.

Not long after, we had an exhibition game against a local all-star team to prepare for the postseason, and on a smaller-than-usual field (I can admit that now), I hit three home runs. In my final at-bat, with the bases loaded, I hit a fly ball to deep left field that was caught just in front of the fence. So much for being able to tell Joe that I had a four home run game too, one punctuated by a grand slam.

After the game, the father of one of my teammates said that he had the ball that I hit for my third home run. He scribbled on it and gave it to me as a keepsake. You can see what he wrote on one side. On another part of the ball, he wrote: BEST CENTER FIELDER IN L.C.? (That stands for Lake Charles, my hometown. Sad note: I am devastated to learn that he wrote this as a question, which I could see upon closer inspection of his faded writing. In my faded memory, there had been no such punctuation.)

At my next haircut appointment, I gave the ball to Joe. He put it in a place of honor in his room at the barber shop, where it remained for years until he gave it back to me. It was one of several stories about me that he would tell to customers, and the ball was a great conversation starter (not that Joe needed any help in that department).

I kept the ball all these years, finding it recently during my coronavirus-inspired spring cleaning amid my observance of our state’s “Stay Home, Stay Safe” directive from the governor. Seeing the ball again brought back a lot of memories.

The other baseball I still have dates to around the turn of the century. A group of friends who also happen to be former co-workers began a yearly ritual of attending at least one Houston Astros game each spring or summer, and I was part of the group the first few times. One year I threw out my back and couldn’t go, and they brought me a souvenir: an official team ball from the gift shop, with the most treasured autographs the ones my friends wrote on the ball before giving it to me. (One of them, another lovely man named Joe, is no longer with us.)

That ball means as much to me as the one in the photo. It’s at my workstation in the nearly empty newsroom here as most of us work from home during this COVID-19 pandemic.

I don’t have a clever ending for this post. What comes to mind is that as this global health crisis has thrown the world’s population and all of our plans a nasty and deadly curveball, treasure any mementos you have of “before,” and all of the people they bring to mind.

And speaking of balls …