Finding my book at Barnes & Noble was a treat …

One of the neatest things about getting old – and contrary to the prevailing sentiments of popular culture there are neat things that somewhat offset the dreary aspects – is that I can easily admit to all kinds of stuff that I might not have been willing to confess to many years ago.

With that preamble, I do hereby confess that it was a major treat to visit a Barnes & Noble bookstore the other day and find the book that I authored and our company published, Legendary Yankee Stadium, right there available for an eager public to wrestle over.

I hadn’t really expected to find it, since the scheduled release was in early May, but I always check the sports section anyway, and there it was, nestled snugly between two other books about the Stadium that I know had come out nearly a year ago. I wanted to share the moment with somebody, anybody, but the only other person there was a middle-aged woman who might have misinterpreted my enthusiasm, and so I restrained myself.

I know this makes me sound like something of a hayseed, but I obviously don’t care. It’s not even the first time I had a book in Barnes & Noble, since the 1994 True Mint book with Alan Rosen was sold at major bookstores as well.

And it wasn’t even the most excited I’ve ever been to find my own handiwork in print in some fashion. Just about 30 years ago I was working for a daily newspaper in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and angled to get my goddaughter employed at age 2 as a model for a Mother’s Day front-page color photo.

We planted Nicky on the pool table, surrounded her with about three dozen stuffed animals and the photographer took the shot. Her dad and I got up around 5 a.m. to rush to the newsstand the morning it came out, and in the 1970s I wasn’t much inclined to be getting up that early. He and I bought about 50 copies.

Now that was a thrill. But finding the Yankee Stadium book last weekend wasn’t too shabby, either.