It was the summer of 1996, and – stop me if youve heard this before – Philadelphia was enduring a sports slump.

With little to occupy me here, an enterprising editor suggested a road trip, one whose primary purpose would be to locate pickup baseball games, the kind that once were hallmarks of American summers.

Discovering none on the first day out, I headed for what seemed like a logical destination, Cooperstown, NY, a town built on and devoted to baseball.

There I encountered skateboarders at Doubleday Field, a re-creation of 19th-century town ball, and an organized baseball tournament at the Field of Dreams complex. But no pickup games. So I phoned the local high school coach for a scouting report.

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