[pool]

When my father was growing up, teenagers in the towns around were self-organizing and played baseball on their own, the guys from this town against the guys from that town. All summer.

When I was growing up, the grown-ups organized everything and decided who played when, and we had...maybe ten? games in a summer, with a few practice sessions before that. It's been a while, but I have the idea that if you were good enough to be in the lineup regularly, you'd get something like 25 chances to hit a baseball per year. Or wait, I think we had games that were more like seven innings. Maybe 25 was an overestimate.

PS Also, something about the death of the baseball card and how the major league strike of 1994 led a generation to move on.

PPS I remember it being fascinating to learn that teenagers were allowed -- or had the idea it was possible -- or something -- to do something so on their own.

[jlgaddis]

Baseball was my favorite sport as a kid. I followed it very closely, had thousands of baseball cards, and could rattle off statistics for hours. I was about 15 when the strike took place, just old enough to understand what was going on and decide that I didn't like it -- it really struck me wrong and made me not care about baseball anymore. I stopped watching it and haven't cared for it since.