When I was a kid, I had no idea that I was watching Academy Award winners every week on the television. I only knew Ernest Borgnine as Captain Quentin McHale of McHale’s Navy, not as an Oscar winner for Marty. Or that he had a prominent role as a villain in From Here to Eternity. Barbara Stanwyck was Victoria Barkley on The Big Valley. I had no idea that she had been a major film star with two Academy Award nominations, one for 1937’s Stella Dallas and the second for Ball of Fire two years later. I certainly had no idea that she and Steve Douglas, aka Fred MacMurray with his three TV sons, had co-starred in Double Indemnity back in 1944.

I didn’t know that Mrs. Partridge, i.e. Shirley Jones, won an Academy Award for her role in Elmer Gantry and as a prostitute at that! I didn’t know that Donna Reed had ever performed in anything but The Donna Reed Show; or that Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale had successful film careers before Perry Mason.

Later, sometimes years later, I’d be watching TV and suddenly exclaim, Hey! Look who it is!

We come into this world unaware of the past. We begin to know about it maybe around the age of five—which for me was 1962, the year McHale’s Navy debuted—but we’re not really aware of it. In any case, we’re quite certain that whatever happened back then has nothing to do with us. After all, at five years old, I pretty much knew everything I needed to know about navigating the world, which for me basically consisted of my home and family. My world, however, was expanding rapidly even then; I just didn’t know it. When I did realize it, the world seemed to be expanding in only one direction—forward. Into the future.

Eventually, I became aware of what went on before; that Captain McHale had a past. For that matter, so did my parents.

Although it took quite a while, I went on to discover that Time not only moves forward, it also moves backward, and simultaneously at that. Every moment of time is not just connected to the moment that came before and the one that comes after, but to every moment that’s ever been.

It’s like a Parade with no beginning and no end. When enough elephants and marching bands and floats have passed, you realize how many must have come before you arrived at the parade. You become aware of the enormity of it all and that it is both awesome and aw-full. I mean, it’s a joy, but it’s a bit scary at the same time. I became eager to discover where all this started, so I ran back in Time toward the front of the Parade. I ran past 1962 and kept going. I watched Marty and From Here to Eternity and listened to the old music (which is new to me) and I passed my parents and then my grandparents when they were young. That’s about as far as I could go, though.

Sooner or later, the Parade catches up again. In fact, it’s marching along faster now than it used to. But, here I am, this senior citizen five year-old, sitting on the shoulders of my earlier self, getting a good view in both directions. In the distance I can see the Ernest Borgnine float is about to come by once more. It is much larger and grander than it was the first time.

Books make great Christmas gifts!

Remember, dear readers, books are wonderful Christmas gifts. I invite you to visit both the Baseball Books and the Fiction page to pick out a few presents! These two pages contain links to an individual book’s Amazon page. Thank you for your loyal support over the years and Merry Christmas!

If you’re losing your mind over Rob Manfred’s idiotic idea of “The Golden At-Bat,” then I especially recommend this volume.