From the Vintage Years

MY ACQUAINTANCESHIP WITH AA IS, thank God, that of an outsider, and I don't come into your presence completely desiccated. You might mark me down as an admiring neutral, who chanced across AA in line of duty. I'm a newspaper reporter--at that time I was a sports writer--and I was trying to find out what sort of an unlisted, jumped-up miracle had suddenly made a paragon of politeness and a brilliant backstopper out of a baseball player who was boozing his way out of the majors, and who obviously didn't have much further to go.