Baseball Days
Recollections of America's Favorite Pastime

by Garret Mathews
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» Michael Dukakis (top, at left), a former governor of Massachusetts, ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1988.

My brother and I, like most Boston kids, were baseball fanatics, and I remember swinging a bat as early as age four. I have thousands of memories, but I guess one of the fondest occured when I was nine and a fourth-grader. I decided early on that I would be a catcher, and I was one of the few people in my K-8 school who could catch a swinging strike. My brother, who was a pitcher, was three years older. The Baker School seventh-grade team didn't have a catcher, so I ended up doing it. Once he pitched a no-hitter and I was the catcher. We won 27-0. It was to the best of my knowledge the only brother battery in the history of Brookline Elementary School baseball.

From the book Baseball Days by Garret Mathews © 1999. Published by Contemporary Books.
Excerpted with permission.