The Shoebox Full of Box Scores

The cardboard had gone soft at the corners. Somebody had written “Ron, keep” on the lid in marker. That was Lori, from when we redid the closet.

The lid had gone loose with age, and it came off in my hand.

I sat down on the bottom step of the basement stairs with the box on my knees.

The clippings were in order. I had forgotten that I had done that. Each season was held together with a paper clip, and the paper clips had rusted a little and left a brown mark on the top one of each stack.

The newsprint had gone the color of weak tea. My pencil had faded, but I could still read it, and my handwriting was better than it is now. I have the shakes a little in my right hand these days, like Dad did, though not so bad.

I read the first one. Line drive to right. Radio says the kid has quick hands. Planting the Johnson eighty. Good job, bud.

I read the second one. He went oh for four against New London. In the margin I had written, “Rough day. Ump had a wide zone, radio says. Rained us out at 3. Good job, bud.”

That one made me laugh, alone in the basement. Good job, bud, for oh for four. I guess I meant it. I guess I meant that he showed up.

I kept going. A sacrifice bunt in a one-run game. A diving stop up the middle that the announcer said was the best play he had seen all spring.

A walk-off single in the junior year, and in the margin I had written, “Pulled over on the township road to hear the last out. Sat there ten minutes after. Good job, bud.”

I did not remember pulling over. Reading it, I remembered it exactly. The tractor idling on the gravel. Red-winged blackbirds on the fence line. Me with my cap off, sitting there like a fool, grinning at the radio.

The ones with the stars were the ones I had not heard. Lori’s secondhand reports. “Lori says he caught a foul ball off the fence. Lori says he was happy on the bus.”

I had forgotten how many of those there were, and how good she was at telling it so I could see it.

Senior year was the thickest stack, because I wrote more that year. I think I knew it was the last of it. I wrote down what the announcer said about colleges looking at him. I wrote down the weather. I wrote down what field I was in.

And at the very bottom of the senior stack was the state tournament.

The section final was the week before, and the paper ran a big box for that one with a photograph, the whole team piled on top of each other in the infield. I had cut that out too, picture and all.

Under it was the clipping from the state game. They lost that one, 3 to 2, in seven innings. Albrecht, 2B, 3 AB, 2 H, a double in the seventh.

In the margin, in my pencil, there was only one line. It was not the radio. It was not where I was planting. It did not say good job.

It said, “I was here, bud.”