I sat on the orange couch, grabbed the television remote, and flipped through the channels: 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. The Mets weren't on. Meanwhile, Tom Glavine was struggling to become the 23rd pitcher in Major League Baseball history to win 300 games. I needed to know how he was doing.

When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to become a professional baseball player. I loved playing ball, and all of the adult men in my family seemed to respect it, too. When I wasn't playing ball, I'd be in my room, listening to the radio, and drawing up my own baseball cards. Collecting cards, too, was a wonderful hobby. The photographs on the fronts were nice, but I was more interested in the information on the backs. Even when UpperDeck came out with their glossy, action photos, Topps cards remained, in my mind, the absolute best. Topps cards listed all of the stats for every single season of a ballplayer's career, even going back at times to his minor league years. How can you beat that?

"Come As You Are" came to an end, and Billy Joel took its place. I lifted myself slowly, studied the radio, and pressed the button marked "Band." Just as ever, like magic, an AM station came through, covered in static and fuzz. It took me only a few moments to find the familiar voice and the catchy jingle, "Let's go Mets! F – A – N!"

That's ECM, in case you didn't know. Geoff Dyer tells us how a label changed the way he listened to music.

Didn't they back up Ziggy Stardust?

Russell Baker's essay in the <I>NYRB</I> is ostensibly a review of two new books bemoaning the current state of journalism. The real pleasure, of course, is reading Russell Baker's take on the subject. Gosh, I miss him.