I recall one christmas. Must have been 1974. We were dirt poor. My father was in and out of the sparsely furnished apartment in a government subsidized “project” in Connecticut. I was about 8. I wanted an electronic football set so bad and I knew we didn’t have any money. We slept on the floors and we ate Indian-style on the kitchen floor. I decided to draw up a note for my mom to tell her how badly I wanted that electric football set. I didn’t want my siblings to see the note, but I wanted my mom to get the note. I decided to leave the note in her tampon box in the bathroom. I can still recall lieing in bed and my mom went into the bathroom. I can still hear her laughing out loud in the bathroom. I got the electronic football set.

My favorite team was the Vikings who had recently lost the super bowl to the Dolphins (1973). I opened the box and discovered that the two teams included were the Dolphins and Redskins (the two super bowl teams from the 1972 season)! My mom was kind enough to buy me little containers of purple and white paint. I spent hours painstakingly painting all the Redskins into Vikings, and painting all numbers of the Vikings players. I loved that set.

Chirstmas presents were always a crap-shoot in my house because of two reasons:

1-My father spent the better part of decade in and out of bankruptcy with his business.

2-My Parents grew up in occupied France during WW2 so I had to hear stories of a good present being a bar of chocolate or an Orange or the gestapo confiscating my Granfather’s car. So I couldn’t help but feel my complaints were rather trivial because I hadn’t received the “Kung Fu” grip version of the G.I. Joe.

Jesus Alou was traded to the Mets in 1975 and My sister an I attended a game in late July vs. the Astros. We were sitting in the second row in the outfield at Shea and Jon Matlack and Jesus Alou were walking a short distance away. My sister asked the two Spanish speaking guys in front of us to yell for Jon Matlack to come over, somehow they interpreted “Jon Matlack” as “Jesus Alou” instead and then spent the next 15 minutes having an in-depth conversation about God knows what with Jesus.

I actually consulted an online version of the Farmer’s Almanac to find out if it was thundering in Detroit one day in the early 60s. I never realized that such a resource was available.

My brother and I would always make jokes about the names Jesus Alou, Ivan DeJesus, and Pepe Frias.

I was reading a passage aloud to her, and I said, “Ivan DEE-GEE-ZUSS”.

“DEE HAY ZOOS,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s pronounced ‘dee hay zoos’, probably. It’s a Spanish name.”

“Oh.”

I, like you, Josh, had a Neft and Cohen encyclopedia that I cherished like a Bible (I’m a year younger than Josh, but I didn’t get mine until 1980). I would spend hours, spellbound, reading the season recaps and discovering teams and players I never knew existed, using it as a basis and source book for the creation of my various “All time lineups” and APBA research. No single tome of any type brought me as much joy and devotion. I updated and bought a new one every five years or so up until 1998. Tragically, this year is the last edition.

At some point during this decade, I started collecting baseball encyclopedias. I came a cross this one again about a month ago at New Haven Reads. That’s some sort of program that helps kids with reading and has a book exchange of sorts. I grabbed it and it’s finally part of my collection again.

I have an essay due for a book about Pumpsie Green in a week and an hour. I planned on finishing a rough draft by December 15, but I finally finished it tonite. Well, it’s almost finished. I came here to find words that I wrote about George Scott and plagiarize myself. One of these days, I’ll have to learn how the writerly types amongst you handle things. I was able to hammer it out by writing first thing in the morning a couple of hundred words at a time.

Enjoy the Winter Solstice however you celebrate it.