the skipper’s scrapbook

The re-birth of an idea from almost four decades past fuels this story of a pair of baseball fans who want to collectively chronicle the final season of their longtime home ballpark. In the skipper’s scrapbook, poet and writer Thomas Porky McDonald shares the tale of the skipper, a man in his late 40’s and The Chief, an octogenarian, who both still share the love of the game of baseball, in a way that is not as prevalent as it once was. Through the pages of a scrapbook based on photos taken as the final season of New York’s Shea Stadium plays out, both the skipper and The Chief cover some old ground, while finding out a little more about one another and themselves. It is 2008, and the New York Mets are preparing for the 45th and final season of their old yard, Shea Stadium, when the skipper broaches the idea of a scrapbook to commemorate the entire season. Once before, back in 1969, the two had teamed up to create a similar volume, only then it was The Chief who had thought of the scrapbook idea, with the skipper, just a small boy, enthusiastically along for the ride. Of course, when the 100-1 New York Mets, the perennial lovable losers of the National League since their inaugural season in 1962, went on to win the first ever National League East title, the ensuing League Championship Series and ultimately the World Series, the scrapbook took on added value and meaning. So much so, that the skipper still has it languishing on a dusty old bookshelf when 2008, the final season of Shea, comes along. In the six months that it takes for a season to transpire, and in a most different way than it was done back in 1969, the new scrapbook takes the two men back one more time to what baseball had always meant to both of them and to so many other fans, even as a new breed of overly statistic-minded individuals crept more and more into the mainstream. A story of loyalty, the skipper’s scrapbook is a decidedly honest account of what many feel when a treasured old ballpark stands down its final days. Whether you are a genuine baseball aficionado or not, the connection between the two main protagonists should prove variously touching, humorous and familiar.