My friend said, “It’s something that I started doing as an infant, around five or six years.” “I learned how to read by reading the sports pages. “I learned math by calculating the box scores and calculating the batting averages.” This was also true for me. This admission is required by journalistic integrity: It was over 50 years ago for both of us – well before ESPN’s Sportscenter, and back when you could get the latest news from the previous night, including the details. Before George Steinbrenner and CBS, I was a Yankees fan. I couldn’t wait to read the morning paper and see if Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle had homered. The San Francisco Giants were my National League team. I was a huge fan of Willie Mays’s performance and wanted to see what he had done. My father taught me how to look at the Mississippians’ performances. Two of his closest friends were Bubba Phillips, a Chicago White Sox pitcher, and Jim Davenport, a Giants third baseman. Phillips, “Bubber”, my dad called him, hit.300 in the 1959 World Series for the “Go Go Sox”, and then had a steak at his house the next night. Davenport – “Peanuts”, my dad called him, took me and my brother to Houston’s visitors clubhouse to meet Mays and Willie McCovey as well as Juan Marichal. Donnie Kessinger from Ole Miss, who was both a great basketball and baseball player, was also a fascinating shortstop for the Chicago Cubs. We sometimes had to wait until the afternoon papers arrived before we could see the West Coast box scores. It was a long and tedious wait. It finally came, and the box scores always tell the stories. The baseball box score is my favorite invention of the 19th century. The box score was created by Henry Chadwick, a sports journalist. It was in 1859 before the Civil War. Strangely, Mr. Chadwick was not a Brit, but he grew up playing cricket. Chadwick was a sports writer for the Long Island Star, and the New York Clipper. His biography describes him as an “intelligent, organized man,” which is fitting since the box score is an intelligent and highly organized invention. Chadwick’s Clipper debut box score was a story that told the story of a championship match between the Brooklyn Excelsiors (BK Stars) and the Brooklyn Excelsiors (BK Stars). Chadwick’s box score is a collection of statistics that account for runs, hits and put-outs. It was remarkably similar to the one you see today in newspapers, on computers and on notepads. It is important to know that Henry Chadwick, who died in 2008, was posthumously inducted into Cooperstown’s Baseball Hall of Fame. Let’s get back to the back porch conversation this morning. My friend’s childhood team was Dodgers. This was both before and after the Bums moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn. He loved Sandy Koufax and Duke Snider. He quickly learned that box score zeroes for Snider were bad and box score zeroes for Koufax were good. This is something that all true baseball fans should learn. My morning newspaper had no box scores so I pulled out my computer to find out who it was. He said, “I always look for Brian Dozier’s Twins and the Twins first.” I said to him, “Dozier was four-for-four, with a home run, three RBI, and a home run, but the Twins lost.” Freddie Freeman? “Five for five: a home run, two RBIs, and five ribbies.” Braves win 9-2.” I told him that you could get a computer to do this by yourself. He said, “It’s just different.” I couldn’t disagree more.