His scorebooks will hopefully be available for years to come. I usually order them two or three at a time just in case they ever run out. The last shipment I got had books that looked a little brown around the edges as if they were gathering dust in a warehouse.
Oddly, these scorebooks are as much a part of me as anything else. I've been using them almost exclusively for over 30 years as my connection to games I've attended. I would be lost without it.
My scorebooks are famous. Usually once a year, one of the Dodger Stadium roving cameramen will pop it up on Diamondvision. The other night, the guy sitting next to us took a picture of that game's scoresheet to show his wife. I've been patted on the back by other fans who see me scoring games. A lost art, I am told.
I have boxes full of old ones in both my NY and my LA apartments. They go back to the good days of the Mets in the 80s and the bad days of the Mets in the 90s. I've got all of the great days of 1986 in Shea Stadium, including the famed Game 6 of the World Series with that little roller behind the bag that gets past Buckner.
The scorebooks visited Chicago's Wrigley Field five years in a row as my college roommate and I made an annual trek there to see the Mets usually lose to the Cubs. My scoring was once acknowledged by an Old Style-infused young lady who decided to call me "Stats" for the rest of the day.
The scorebooks made the trip West with me when I first became an occasional Dodger fan that ultimately bloomed into a full-fledged, card-carrying member of Blue Heaven. Lots of games some ordinary and others not so. Lots of cool moments. Lots of bitter disappointment.
But, now etched in ink for eternity is one more game and one more huge baseball memory. You see it at the top. Justin Turner's homerun that sailed into some fan's glove and subsequently Dodgers lore. The scene was complete bedlam. I've felt stadiums actually sway twice in my life. For Game 6 of 1986 and then Sunday night.
Because of the frenzy, I didn't actually record the homerun into my book until I had arrived home two hours later. But it was important as always to complete the scoring of the game.
I turn the page for the next one. And, as far as I am concerned, there will be always be a scorebook page for me to turn.
Dinner last night: Breakfast for dinner --- French toast and bacon.
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