I saw a sliver of my childhood self

“That’s a nice Expos shirt.”

This observation was offered by my neighbor’s nephew on Friday night as we rode the elevator up to the 10th floor of our apartment building.

This caught me by surprise. My neighbor’s nephew is way too young to have ever seen the Expos play a baseball game yet here he was complimenting me on my shirt.

“You must be a pretty big baseball fan,” I said.

The elevator chimed, the door opened and we all exited onto our floor.

“You have no idea,” his mother said. “We’re going to the Mets game tomorrow night.”

“They’re playing the Mariners,” I said. “That’s the team I root for.”

“Maybe Raleigh will hit another home run,” the young fellow said.

It was a brief interaction. Ninety seconds tops. But in that time, I saw a little sliver of my childhood self not just in his enthusiasm for baseball, but the way his mom was encouraging it. I decided I wanted to offer some sort of encouragement to this young man who seemed as sports-obsessed as I was at his age. I’ll get to that in a second.

This item is currently located at the end of our block. It has been there since Saturday:

I am currently in the process of writing a fictional short story about the sequence of events from the booting of the car to the decision to remove and discard the booted tire instead of paying the fine necessary for the sheriff to remove the boot.

I think there’s a 73 percent chance that the true story behind what happened is funnier and more unbelievable than anything my peanut brain will conjured up. Whatever the explanation, it’s an improvement on Homer Simpson’s approach to New York parking.

I have not been tracking Victor Robles’s recovery from the shoulder injury he suffered in early April while making a bonkers catch in right field. I did not know that he began a rehab assignment with Tacoma on Aug. 12. I did not know he had been hit by a pitch four times in the first week of that assignment.

I know that after being hit by a pitch for the fifth time, he got so mad he grabbed his bat and whipped it at the pitcher, however.

You are most definitely not allowed to do this. Not even if you’ve alrady been hit four times that week.

The pitcher, whose name is Jon Estes, was not injured. Robles is certain to be suspended.

Here’s the part of the story where the sports writer usually weaves his way into offering an opinion on what happened. I think that’s kind of silly in this situation. It’s clear what Robles did was dangerous. It was wrong. He’s certainly going to get suspended for it.

I am interested in his apology, though. That’s because I’m a sicko about being sorry, and while I Robles didn’t provide an awful apology, it wasn’t all that good, either.

As for the Mariners? Well, they’ve lost four of six games on this road trip, and if you’re looking for the reason, it’s the difficulty Seattle has had getting to the opponent’s starting pitching.

Next up: Philadelphia (71-53). The Phillies are leading the NL East, but like the Mariners, they’ve lost four of their last six games. The Phils are returning home after a 9-game road trip.

I was 8 years old and in third grade when Gary Carter appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. It was the magazine’s baseball preview issue, and Jim Dobey—who was one of my father’s friends—would give me his copy of the magazine after he was finished with it.

Carter was the catcher for the Montreal Expos, and upon finishing the story, I decided he was my favorite baseball player in the whole world.

I’m not sure how long that designation would have lasted, however, had my mom not only encouraged me to write a letter to him, but then found an address to mail it to. We did not enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope however, and the reason I know that is that the response came in an envelope with the team’s logo printed as part of the return address.

Inside was a picture that was not just signed, but personalized.

My interest in sports has been one of the most consistent threads in my life. I’m not sure that’s entirely a good thing, but I know it has not been bad, either.

I have also been incredibly fortunate over the course of my life to have people who have encouraged my interest in sports from my father’s friends—who flew me to games in other states—to older sports journalists who helped me work my way up in that industry.

And my mom. I’ve written before how she was a constant source of encouragement and support even when it came to sports. No, especially when it came to sports.

I think that’s part of why I felt so moved after meeting my neighbor’s nephew. It wasn’t just that his interest in sports reminded me of myself. It was that him coming to New York to visit his aunt and heading to a Mets game with his mom reminded me of the way my mom had nurtured and encouraged my interest in sports.

On Saturday, I put an envelope in front of my neighbor’s door. It included a note, saying I didn’t want to overstep, but her nephew’s interest in baseball had resonated with me, reminding me of how I might have been at that age.

I wrote a letter explaining how I came to like the Expos in the first place, and I clipped it to a copy of a story I wrote for The Seattle Times in 2001 when I actually got to interview Gary Carter when he came to Seattle as part of FanFest. (I would link to the story here if it was available in The Seattle Times jacked-up archive. It is not available, however. Because the archive is all kinds of jacked up.)

I included a couple of Pedro Martinez rookie cards I had, which sounds more impressive than it is. Most of the cards I collected were from an era of mass production, and because of that, they haven’t retained much monetary value.

That’s not the point, though. I wanted to encourage his interest in baseball as so many people out there have done for me and share what sports have come to mean over the course of my life.

On Saturday night, after he got back from the Mets game with his mom, my neighbor’s nephew came over to thank me. He was super sweet. I found out of the 13 books he has read this summer, five involved baseball. He also knew that the Expos played their last game in Montreal in 2004, which is exactly nine years before he was born.

I went to sleep smiling on Saturday, hoping he gets as much from his love of baseball as I have.