It’s spring! That means rain, mud, green grass, robins and BASEBALL. And my yearly mystery.

When baseball starts each Spring, I think back to my childhood. There were two things I loved to do when I was young: play baseball and read.

I played baseball in elementary school for the Longfellow Lions. We were a group of kids who went to the same school and signed up together to play park board baseball. We were OK. I played second base and right field.

One year during the baseball season, I found a fictional story about baseball to read. I really liked the book. Iit is one of the few books I remember reading more than once.

The book was about a young boy who was the batboy or ballboy for a team. He did odd jobs for the team. He searched through clover fields and made some of his own four-leaf clovers to give to the players for good luck. There was also a big play in a game. The batter was going to fake a bunt and then take a full swing at the ball to drive in a winning run.

That’s all I remember about the story. That, and the fact that I liked the book so much that I wanted to write the author and let him know. The librarian showed me how to figure out who the publisher was from the copyright page. We found the address for the publisher, and I wrote to the author via his publisher. And he wrote back! I remember the typed pages on flimsy paper. I had them for a while, but that was a long time ago, and I don’t know where they are now.

My mystery is I can’t remember the name of the book or who the author is.

Today, as a reader and an author, I enjoy how easy it is for reader and author to connect via social media or email. As an author, I’ve received some great emails from readers who are surprised to hear back from me. I respond because I remember how I felt getting a letter back from an author so long ago.

I still want to solve this mystery. I’ve looked for the book on-line, talked to librarians, made other posts about this, but still the mystery goes on. I was hoping to find the book and share it with my son as he was growing up and playing baseball. He’s almost too old to enjoy it today, but it’s still something I’d like to share with him.

If you can help solve my mystery, I’d appreciate it. There are a couple of clues above from what I remember about the story and here are some more:

Ball or batboy makes four-leaf clovers for the baseball team for luck. They think he found them.

There’s a big hit in the game, fake bunt to full swing hit.

Probably written in the 1960’s as I read it from my school library around 1970.

US - New York publisher, I think.

Not a lot to go on, but if it was easy I would’ve found it by now.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find the name of the book.

Thanks and good luck!

I'm at douglasdorow@gmail.com