NORFOLK, Va.---Several months ago I sauntered into Prince Books in downtown Norfolk. People don't saunter anymore.

The bookstore is on the ground floor of the century old orange brick Towne Bank Building, a block from the Elizabeth River. Prince is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. I always look for local literature, music and WPA guides when I travel.

Instead, I found an old friend from Chicago.

Tucked away in a corner of sports books I saw the 2008 autobiography "You Should Have Seen The Ones I Turned Down (Tales from a Life Spent in Hotels and Locker Rooms With Everyone from Jerry Vale to Leo Durocher)" [$20, admmgt.com] by Blake Cullen.

The book opened the door to my youth.

Blake Cullen was traveling secretary for the Chicago Cubs between 1965 and 1975.

He made travel arrangements, booked hotels for the team, kept statistics, assigned uniform numbers, wrote press releases and handled daily business management. I remembered Cullen's name from the 1969 Cubs team that broke my heart, the team that taught a 14-year-old about life's unexpected disappointments........

MESA, Az.---Let's say you are operating a roadside motel and mineral bath on the dusty outskirts of Mesa, Arizona.
Horace Stoneham finds your Buckhorn Mineral Baths, Motel and Wildlife Museum in 1947 when he owns the New York Giants.

Ted and Alice Sliger are running the operation with the wild west panache of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
Ted likes to wear cowboy hats, fish and hunt. He is an amateur taxidermist. Over time more than 400 animals native to Arizona become preserved for time in the motel's "Trophy Room." Dolly, a rare four-horned sheep hovers over the room's fireplace.

Ted and Alice are homesteaders in the most honest sense. The baths begin as a 1935 trading post and the Sligers live there for seven years before electricity arrives. Stoneham is from New York and knows the best of times. Ted and Alice are from rural Arizona and know the worst of times.

Their paths cross on Highway 60 (The Apache Trail) in East Mesa.......