[FromVAtoLA]

I was just scrolling through several box scores on my phone to see how the playoff standings were shaping up with a few days left in the season. That reminded me of when I was a kid and would wake up early this time of year to check the box scores and the standings in the morning newspaper. And, because I grew up in Virginia, I would often get so frustrated with the west coast games and the games that went late into extra innings. Those games would miss the publishing window.

So, day-old stats and standings would be mixed with two-day old stats, and I was left wondering about the latest news on the pennant races. I would quickly switch on the local news with the hopes that they would have some good updates on the sports segment which usually started at 21-past and 51-past the hour.

I also remembered how my local paper only ran the complete batting and pitching stats on Sundays. During this time of year, I would save that page and with a pencil and calculator try to figure out where players were going land at the end of the season based on each day's box score.

Getting old is weird. All of this is on my phone now...in real-time. It's so amazing and so much better; yet, there's some sense of nostalgia for how much I enjoyed baseball during my formative years when I would sit at the kitchen counter with a bowl of sugary cereal and my ink-smudged fingers would guide me through the season.