My first season as a baseball fan....

[Cuauhtla]

my team won the World Series and its ace won 31 games.

That bit of trivia stumps some of the young'uns, but shouldn't, since only one guy has had a 30 win season in the past 70 years or so (and I'm well under 70).

My way of noting that Denny McLain has a new book out, "I Told You I Wasn't Perfect".

[JackRiddler]

1. My first season as a baseball fan...

My team sucked - famously - that year and for the next decade. Such that a three-week hot streak by one journeyman 3B named Lenny Randle, whom you have never heard of, and some heat from the equally forgotten Craig Swan still stand out as special, to the little boy and his littler brother who witnessed it by way of Tube.

Not to mention the first, rather disastrous managerial stint by a player-manager named Joe Torre. (Why should it surprise me that he was a Cardinal at heart, at least back then?)

Ah, but a short (very long!) decade later: Contention. And the pain of losing when it counts. To Cardinals, damn them.

And then: That championship season! Thank you, Bill Buckner.