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He sponsored a pre-game interview show on the radio station that broadcast the play-by-play, and at the end of the five minute programme aired live from the dugout, the player who'd been the guest would get a gift certificate for a pair of shoes from Papa's store. Nowadays, on a per pitch basis, baseball stars earn the equivalent of a price of a dozen pairs of shoes with a lone swing of the bat. They don't even have to make contact. Back then, in the days before free agency, it was a different story. Even stars got paid so little that many of them had to work on farms or in factories during the winter to support their family. They gratefully accepted the freebee and made straight to Papa's store the next day. When they arrived, they found me waiting.

As a result, for years I was the palest kid on the block. Whenever the Braves were playing at home, I'd forget about my buddies to spend day after day waiting for a ball player to walk through the door of Papa's store. Because so few games were televised, I only knew what the guys looked like in a uniform and wearing a cap, either from their card in a bubble gum pack or at a distance on the field. Recognising one on the street was tough. Most often, Papa or one of his sales people, would slide over next to me and whisper, "Know who that is?"

It was a baseball player!

Over the next several, glorious summers, along with meeting real, live major leaguers in the store, Papa and I took advantage of another benefit of his radio sponsorship: An endless supply of free tickets. Fred Haney, the club's manager at the time, became good friends with Papa. Whenever we wanted to go to a game, a call to the club house produced an envelop for us at the press gate. We'd see forty or fifty games together each season. I went to my first World Series as a kid because when the Braves won the National League pennant, Haney walked into the store and handed him a clutch of tickets for each of the games to be played in Milwaukee.

But best of all, a big reason (but not the only one) why baseball became my most faithful love, is that Haney would let me shag fly balls in the outfield during batting practice. This was aeons before America turned itself into the land of the lawsuit and the home of the aggrieved. No one worried a whole lot whether an eight year old boy might get hurt trying to glove a screaming line drive that was travelling at over 100 miles per hour, hit at him by a fully developed professional athlete. I never got hurt but if

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