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There's a brand new book out there irresistibly titled Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards by Josh Wilker that is getting some terrific reviews. When my copy arrives, I'll offer a considered response, though I have to say out front that it has all the earmarks of being my kind of book, combining as it apparently does a number of elements that resonate with so many of my own interests, not least among them the continuing splendor of our national pastime, baseball, and the idea that collecting is a metaphor for life itself.

But in the meantime, I'd like to share a baseball card story of my own, and the best part is that it isn't one that has mellowed over the many decades since I, too, hoarded these marvelous little objects that so evocatively define a certain time and place, but one that came my way a mere two months ago during a trip my wife and I made to Mississippi, and which I wrote about in my most recent online column for Fine Books & Collections.

Since length was an issue in that article--and since the topic at hand was the literary tour we had just completed--one detail I did not mention in the piece was a wonderful conversation Connie and I had one morning over breakfast with Jim Miles, the personable gentleman who so capably drove our bus from town to town throughout the Mississippi Delta over the three days of the tour. A tall, broad-shouldered, athletic man with a rock solid handshake--and clearly someone, to my eye, who had participated in organized sports back in the day--Jim smiled when I teasingly asked what position he had played as a youngster, linebacker or tackle. "Well, I did play a little football in high school," he said amiably, "but baseball was my sport."

And thus began the following tale:

A native of Batesville, Mississippi, Jim grew up on a farm harboring a dream like so many millions of other American boys that he might one day play in the big leagues, and he became fairly adept at throwing tattered old baseballs wrapped in electrician's tape at targets he had drawn on the side of the family barn. "This was hard-core St. Louis Cardinals territory back then, but my favorite team was always the New York Yankees, because they won all the time," he recalled in his easy Southern drawl. "I threw pitch after pitch at that barn, and in the game I always played in my head, it usually came down to me against Mickey Mantle in the bottom half of the ninth inning with the World Series on the line. And the way it always played out was that Mickey Mantle would hit a grand slam off me to win the game, and the series."

Pretty odd, I thought, that he didn't whiff Mantle in his imaginary confrontation, he served up what amounted to a gopher ball. "He was my hero," Miles explained unapologetically. "To my way of thinking, it would have been an honor to just pitch against him."

So now we jump ahead to the 1960s; James Charlie Miles, Jr. is a star right-handed pitcher with Delta State University, and he signs as a free agent with the Washington Senators organization. He bangs around the minor leagues for a couple of years, moves from farm team to farm team, and then one day in 1968 he is told to get on a bus and join the parent team, which was in dire need of some fresh relief pitching to help what was, historically, a club that had earned the reputation for its city as always being "first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League."

Jim appeared in just three games that year in the majors, ut one of them was played in New York City, where the young man had never been before in his life. "When I came out of the runway into Yankee Stadium, and looked around, I was dizzy with excitement," he said, and he recalled going to Monument Park in the outfield to pay his respects at the plaques honoring Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig before the game got underway. He passed most of the contest uneventfully in the bullpen, but in the top of the sixth word came from the dugout that he should warm up and get ready to pitch the bottom half of the inning.

The Senators, typically, were behind, so there was little drama involved in the outcome. But it was an opportunity for Miles to show what he had, and he wasted little time getting two men out. "Then one thing led to another," he said, and before he knew it the bases were loaded, with none other than Number 7 himself, Mickey Mantle, then playing in what would be the final year of his illustrious career, due up next. A switch-hitter, Mantle stepped into the batter's box from the left side of the plate, where his power was greatest, and focused his attention on the lanky right-hander standing 60 feet, 6 inches away.

"I had a sneaky little fast ball that tailed away from left-handed hitters," Miles said, and he quickly got ahead in the count, no balls and two strikes--but not without suffering through two monster swings that seemed to take the air out of the park. "So here I am ahead in the count, and I figure I'll try this tricky little pitch of mine, a Luis Tiant kind of twirl I had developed where I have my back to the plate for an instant before releasing the ball. I admit I was probably being a little too cute for my own good, and when I let it go I could see it was heading right down the middle of the plate, exactly where I didn't want it to be."

It was a grooved pitch, in other words, right in the Mick's wheelhouse, but the funny motion, in all likelihood, caused the slugger to flinch momentarily and lay off the ball--which the umpire shockingly called strike three. "Well let me tell you I floated off the mound into the dugout," Miles said, and it was the only time he would ever face Mantle. He returned to the Senators the following year, played for the legendary Ted Williams, pitched in a dozen games, then retired at season's end after suffering a career-ending injury. He would spend many years in Mississippi as a coach and athletic director at a local college, winning a number of divisional championships, all the while rich in the memory that he'd had a once-in-a-lifetime moment in Yankee Stadium, living out a boyhood fantasy in ways that he could have never foreseen.

As luck would have it, Jim had an extra baseball card along with him in the bus, which I was honored to accept as a gift. It's a Tops 154 rookie card, issued in 1970--Miles was still technically a rookie in 1969--and features his photo on the front, above that of another Washington player, Jan Dukes. His Minor League stats appear on the back, with this spine-tingling line:

"Jim comes equipped with a sinking fast ball and good curves. Fanned Mickey Mantle only time he ever faced him."

Such stuff as dreams are made on; and a keeper for sure.

If you find yourself driving through New Jersey and have a couple of free hours on your hands, you might consider visiting the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, a truly remarkable concentration of material objects from the golden age of invention, and for scholars and researchers the repository of what is estimated to be five million papers and documents relating to the work of a self-educated creative genius. As national parks go, this one might not share top billing with the Grand Canyon, Yosemite or Niagara Falls, but it lacks nothing in the form of illuminating the can-do spirit of the American Industrial Revolution and showcasing the marvels of gee-wizardry. Most of the 1,093 patents granted to Edison were for inventions that were developed here

Recently reopened after a six-year $13 million renovation that included the installation of an elevator and various interactive displays, the complex--known informally in its time as Edison's "invention factory"--is now welcoming the public once again, and allowing visits throughout the various working spaces and laboratories, where teams of innovators once worked to develop such modern marvels as the phonograph, a fluoroscope to view x-ray images, machines to extract iron from ore, processes to streamline the manufacture of cement, cylinder recorders for office dictation, and nickel-iron-alkaline storage batteries. A motion picture projector synchronized with a phonograph that he called the kinetophone was developed here as well; it led to the opening of the world's first movie studio, which visitors can see on the third floor, complete with an original Steinway piano used to audition show-biz hopefuls.

Built in 1887, this facility was ten times larger than the one Edison had used for ten years at nearby Menlo Park, where he invented the electric light system. If you had no idea what is contained on these grounds--and if there were no signs to identify it as a national park--the temptation would be to drive right by the three-story brick structure, assuming it to be one of many nineteenth-century industrial sites so typical of the northeast.

Schooled at home as a child by his mother, Edison was a largely self-taught autodidact, and among the many fascinating holdings here is a 10,000-volume library still shelved in his personal working area. Between two book cases in an alcove off to one side is a small bed, placed there by Edison's wife so the great thinker could take an occasional catnap. An inveterate note-taker and doodler, Edison was forever sketching away in his notebooks, of which 3,500 survive; seeing some of these, in fact, was my primary interest in a recent visit, graciously arranged and hosted by Leonard  DeGraaf, archivist for the Thomas Edison National Historical Park.

The Edison site is one of three National Park Service properties that maintains substantial collections of original manuscripts and archives, and functions as a research facility for scholars; others include the Colonial home of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Cambridge, Mass., and the house of master garden architect Frederick Law Olmsted in the Boston suburb of Brookline. Also part of the Edison complex--which was presented to the National Park Service by the Edison family in 1962--is the family mansion, Glenmont, set atop a scenic hill just a couple blocks away, and open to visitors as well. Well worth a trip.

It is an axiom in book collecting that the market value of an object is not necessarily determined by what one person is willing to pay for the privilege of ownership, but by the lengths to which a determined underbidder is willing to compete for the prize in open bidding. This dynamic was in persuasive evidence last night a few miles north of West Palm Beach in Stuart, Florida, at an auction organized to benefit the Hibiscus Children's Center, a local charity dedicated to the needs of abused and neglected youngsters.

Billed the Little Auction That Could in respectful tribute to Watty Piper's classic children's tale of infinite possibilities, The Little Engine That Could, the premise was centered around asking various celebrities to inscribe copies of books that had meaning in their lives. More than 80 people responded, and it was decided to offer the books for sale in two venues, online at eBay for 70 of the items in a contest that continues through Nov. 25, and last night in open competition at the historic Lyric Theater before an audience of 400 people for 14 others.

A total of $34,000 was raised last night, the most coveted item being Pop-up White House, a nicely engineered piece of movable art with illustrations by local artist Chuck Fischer--and signed by President Barack Obama; this neat little item, a unique curiosity if ever there was one, was hammered down at $6,500.  Equally robust was the $4,500 paid for a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes signed by the renowned animal authority Jane Goodall--her specialty is chimpanzees, naturally--the $2,900 for a copy of Horatio Alger, Jr.'s Struggling Upward signed by Maya Angelou, and the $2,600 bid for the copy of Harry Potter (Book 7), inscribed by the author, J. K. Rowling.

It was a great program, about as capably conceived, organized, and executed as anything comparable I have ever been associated with, and the credit for that certainly goes out to every member of the crackerjack staff of volunteers, but primarily to the guiding spirit, the co-chair of the event, Karla Preissman, who came up with the concept two years ago, and contacted every celebrity individually to participatee. A brilliant move on her part was to arrange for a tastefully mounted exhibition of the books at the Elliott Museum in Stuart, which my wife and I had a chance to visit yesterday before the evening's festivities.

It was an unannounced visit there earlier in the week by a person who has chosen to remain anonymous that led to the preemptive bid of $850,000--that is not a typo, it is $850,000--for a copy of Jean de Brunhoff's The Travels of Babar co-signed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and his mother, the former First Lady, Barbara Bush.

The benefactor was said to be passionate about the goals of the Hibiscus Center, and found this a worthy way of supporting it. In one fell swoop--before the first bid went up last night--the Little Auction That Could became the Little Auction That Most Assuredly Did, all of it made possible by the enduring magic of books. An unqualified plus was the opportunity I had to speak on the program with Carl Hiaasen; the man is a fabulous speaker, and a real hoot.

Indulge me, please, as I make a connection between the recent victory in the World Series of the New York Yankees--their 27th championship--and what so many futurists perceive to be the imminence of a paperless society, and what, by extension, all that portends for the traditional book as we know it. It's a stretch, I agree, but an amusing concept to consider all the same.

If you were paying attention this past Friday, there was a ticker-tape parade through Lower Manhattan, and unlike so many other New Englanders who chose to tune out--I have been a Red Sox fan for more than half-a-century--I tuned in. Yes, I wanted to see the MVP, Hideki Matsui, riding in the lead float, I even wanted to see that amiable turncoat, Johnny Damon (I am actually very fond of the man), rejoicing in the triumph with his ebullient teammates. But what I wanted to see most of all was how New York City was going to handle the matter of the ticker tape at a time when there is no ticker tape.

The reason for that, you see, is quite simply that there are no more stock tickers, there haven't been any for about thirty years or so, the only ones that survive are now museum pieces, and the only ticker tape available these days is a custom-order curiosity that sells online for $40 a spool. But there was a parade in Lower Manhattan through the Canyon of Heroes on Friday, all right--the 205th such celebration since the whole tradition got started on October, 29, 1886, that one to salute the newly dedicated Statue of Liberty--and there was plenty of paper filling the air. What it was, according to press accounts, was a half-ton of confetti packed in 400 bags and trucked in by a group known as the Downtown Alliance to be distributed among employees in the financial district who now get their stock quotations from computers.

When the confetti ran out, according to a piece in the New York Post, some dull-witted revelers began tossing rolls of toilet paper, which is fine enough, I suppose, as long as its unspooled and not likely to cause a concussion if it hits someone on the street, but not so bright were the financial records and other confidential office materials that went out the windows along with it. Among the fifty tons of debris collected by sanitation workers were pay stubs and trust fund balance sheets. Some of the documents came from the Liberty Street financial firm A.L. Sarroff, including client accounts, with Social Security numbers and detailed banking data. "They're records that should have been shredded," said firm founder Alan Sarroff. "An overzealous employee threw them out the window. He was reprimanded."

So--a half-ton of confetti, and fifty tons of office paper, a ticker tape parade doth make. There's still plenty of cellulose, in other words, to fill the void, and a good deal of it, apparently, remains necessary to the conducting of business. And the future of the parade itself? Like the traditional book that so many of us prefer, it's in no immediate jeopardy of falling out of favor either. Why? Simple enough, in both instances, because people like it. All you need to mount a procession through in the city that never sleeps is a legitimate hero to honor. Good luck on that score; if you're going to toss out the office records in jubilation, though, make sure you shred them first.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy for me, starting off with a keynote address in Columbus, Ohio before the Ohio Preservation Council on the occasion of the group's 25th anniversary--the theme for the event was irresistibly titled "A Celebration of Paper--followed in quick succession by presentations in Worcester, Mass., to benefit the Worcester Public Library and the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

There were very nice audiences in attendance at each of the events, all of them reaffirming for me my abiding conviction that book people are the greatest. I was pleased to learn in Worcester that the main branch last year had more than a million people use their services, quite a testament in a city whose population is somewhere in the neighborhood of 180,000 people. If there is any municipal service anywhere that gives its residents more bang for their taxpayer dollars than the library, I'd like to know what it is. Doesn't matter if you're a senior citizen, an elementary school student, an immigrant looking for help, or a just casual reader interested in reading the new Dee Brown blockbuster, the library is there, doing it's job--and with no lobbyists, either, pleading its case to the politicians who vote on budgets. I was one of three speakers--Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, and historian Russell McClintock were the others--and we helped raise enough money to keep the library open on Sundays through the rest of the fall. Pretty cool.

The story was much the same in New York. The Mid-Manhattan branch is situated directly across Fifth Avenue from the main research library--the magnificent building featuring Patience and Fortitude, the wonderful lions carved of pink Tennessee marble, at the front door--and is six floors of activity, with public programs mounted pretty much every week-night, all of them free and open to everyone. Hats off to Cynthia Chaldekas, senior librarian there, and coordinator of all these events. A class act all around.

I would be remiss, finally, if I did not mention the great time I had last Sunday participating in the day-long program of activities organized by Hand Papermaking magazine, which included an introduction to the remarkable collection of papers from all eras and every continent--some 40,000 specimens all told--gathered over the years by Sidney Berger, a noted bibliophile and writer of books about books, who is also director of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. Sid's wife, Michele Cloonan, is dean of the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Services, one of the top programs of its kind in the country, and an enthusiastic collector of paper and type specimens in her own right.

Also on the agenda was a visit to the International Paper Museum in Brookline, Mass., established by Elaine Koretsky, one of the outstanding scholars in papermaking history, justly celebrated as the Dard Hunter of her generation. I wrote a piece for Fine Books & Collections magazine two years ago about a trip I took to China with Elaine and a group of paper pilgrims, our goal to see paper as it has been made for more than two thousand years in the place where the skill was invented; it's on my website in the travelogue section, with a bunch of photos I shot; check it out.

Nothing is more entertaining than a visit to the home of a favorite author, especially when the house in question once belonged to the unrepentant bibliomaniac and pack rat Edward Gorey, who died nine years ago at 75, and left behind a veritable treasure trove of odds and ends. His rambling, 13-room cottage on 8 Strawberry Lane in Yarmouthport, Mass.--just off the Old King's Highway (also known as Route 6A) on Cape Cod--is now a museum, chock full of "stuff" such as antique cheese graters, bottles, sketches, the trademark beaver skin coat, various cloth creatures--including one of the original Figbash-- made and stitched by hand, toys, and of course a few of the 35,000 books Gorey had acquired during his lifetime, and which helped inform his extraordinary body of work.

There are imaginary bats and cats, of course (including one real feline in residence, aptly named Ombledroom, pictured here), some bugs and slugs--the full Gorey oeuvre is in evidence, and altogether makes for a delightful way to spend an hour, either solo or with kids, it doesn't matter, since everyone is welcome, and like the man's great body of work itself, there is something for everyone. A nice touch is the scavenger hunt each visitor is invited to participate in; there are twenty-six objects from "The Ghastlycrumb Tinies" hidden in plain view in each room on the tour, there to be discovered by one and all. During my most recent trip there last week, I learned that Gorey's enormous library of books--they had been kept in an adjoining barn--had recently been shipped off to the West Coast, where they will take up residence at San Diego State University, quite a nice turn of events, since the library there is already home to the archives of the writer Peter Newmeyer, who collaborated with Gorey on a number of wonderful books.

Rick Jones, a Gorey friend who is now director and curator of the Edward Gorey House, told me that an interesting detail regarding the books is that their former owner wrote in every one when he read it, how long it took, and whether he read it again. With regard to the curiosities, Jones had this wonderful observation: "One cheese grater is a cheese grater; for Edward, a group of them became a work of art."