"As the players filed out to enter the runway to the dugout, I looked anxiously for Roy Face. I finally saw him coming and in my best manners stepped up and asked him for his autograph. He calmly ignored me and proceeded down the runway. I was stunned! One of my favorite heroes had brushed me off without the slightest acknowledgment at all. I stood there pondering what to do next when a large arm appeared around my shoulders and a hand took the ball from my grasp. I looked up to see a beaming smile beneath a Pirate hat and a large 21 on the jersey. The man handed me the ball with a wink and headed onto the field. I looked down at the ball and could not believe that it now proudly bore the name ROBERTO CLEMENTE in bold black ink. Roy Face's spot on my hero list had just been filled by one of the greatest players in the game. ... I could only marvel that the man who had helped find me a hero had been a bona fide hero trying to help an entire nation." (p. 147-148) "True Heroes Earn the Title," Michael J. Feigum

Yeah, yeah, it's "Chicken Soup," the Reader's Digest of book series, but who made a rule saying that we can't enjoy true and heartwarming tales instead of mystery or action novels?

Made up of dozens of two or three-page stories, all true, all 'feel good' stories. After a while it can get repetitive if you read 50 pages in the same sitting, and many are mushy, so don't read the entire book at once or risk so much sweetness I was getting a toothache.

Some of the stories are newly written, whether as columns in papers and magazines or humorous anecdotes, others older, such as Mickey Mantle's from 1964. Authors include players/coaches, media and writers, ranging from Tommy Lasorda to Ken Rosenthal (my favorite baseball expert, from The Sporting News) and even comedy geniuses like Dave Berry, whose weekly essay is one of the best reasons to pick up the Sunday paper.

Nostalgia mania! Such a compilation of tales is sure to elicit many chills, not down my spine but my around neck and head, too, which feels odd but is when I truly feel touched. As the introduction muses: "For millions of fans worldwide, baseball is much more than a sport. It is a filter, a backdrop, a canvas against and through which we experience and live our lives." Or as James Earl Jones says in Field of Dreams: "This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that was good and could be good again."

Then again, if the players strike this summer, all this tingling will be gone, replaced with seething disgust for what my beloved game has become on the pro level. These players average $2 million a season playing a game most would pay to play, if only for a game. What I wouldn't give to take batting practice at Fenway Park, the shining emerald beacon for Red Sox fans and fans of baseball tradition. Instead, I settled for paying $40 to see a couple of games there with Dad and Danielle, and it was worth every penny.

The sport to which I owe so much has undergone profound changes. . . . But it's still baseball. Kids still imitate their heroes on playgrounds. Fans still ruin expensive suits going after foul balls that cost five dollars. Hitting streaks still make the network news. And the hot dogs still taste better at the ballpark than at home. - Duke Snider.

Amen, Duke. Think about it: What other sport features men, women and children risking life and limb in the almost-always futile effort of catching a ball worth $5 entering the stands at 50 mph?