The year was 1962. The place–a small town in Missouri so insignificant it billed itself as The Gateway to the Ozarks. Not the Ozark Mountains themselves, you understand, but if you wanted to get to them you had to go through us. Unless you were coming from the south, the east or the west, in which case you could avoid us and go through some other gateway.

Ray Sadecki, bespectacled left-handed fireballer, 6-8 that year.

I was one of five eleven-year-old boys who, because of our inadequate baseball skills, had been held back on a B-level Little League team, when others our age or younger had been promoted to the “A” league. Even John Rader, who couldn’t throw a ball and hit the broad side of a barn, was called up because his dad was chummy with–there I go again, angrily rehashing the past. It’s better to just let it…