The hits keep comin'

And now Lou Brock, dammit.

First Tom Seaver and now Lou and it's been a hard week for those of us who grew up wearing Red Ball Jets and collecting baseball cards. The rule was, Chico Salmon and Gary Bell always went in the spokes of your bike, because who didn't have three or four Chico Salmons and Gary Bells?

All that was a long time ago, of course, and this week has done nothing but remind us of just how long ago. The pieces of those days peel away, one by one by one. And so Tom Seaver goes and Lou Brock goes, and each erasing comes with its own memories, hazy and ever more distant.

For me Lou Brock will always remind me of 1964, the first year I can actually remember following a World Series. It was Brock's Cardinals against the Yankees, and we snuck our transistor radios into class because they played the games in the afternoon then, the way God intended. And if I dig hard enough, I can pull up one specific memory from all that.

It was late in the afternoon and the light was all burnished in that particular way October light in the afternoon tends to get, and I was on the bus home. And as we pulled away from the school, I looked out the window and saw one of my classmates grimly clomping down the sidewalk with a piece of poster board stuck in his cap.

On it he'd written one word: YANKS.

It was a gesture of pure defiance, because Lou Brock and the Cardinals had beaten the Yanks that day and the Series was over. End of an era for the Yankees; beginning of one for the Cardinals.

And now the end of Lou Brock, and one more piece gone from both of those eras.

Dammit.