No. 194 – I’d Die Without You

Performer: P.M. Dawn

Songwriters: Attrell Cordles

Original Release: Original Soundtrack Album: Boomerang

Year: 1992

Definitive Version: None.

Like The Brothers Johnson and disco, P.M. Dawn is as close to rap as I get on this list, although I’d Die Without You obviously isn’t rap. I mean, it’s no more rap, than, say, Never Can Say Goodbye.

Anyway, Laurie and I saw each other three weeks after our crucial visit at the beginning of April 2005 (story to come), and it was auspicious for a couple of reasons. The first was because the Friday I arrived, I told Laurie over dinner at Annamaria Pastaria that I wanted to start seeing her more often—a request to which she eagerly assented.

The second was that it was my final visit to The Sporting News Research Center in St. Louis. I’d been once before, in 2002, as I ramped up my minor-league-baseball research. Now, after Cleveland, after Cooperstown, I wanted to make another trip.

A little backstory: For years, TSN was infamous among the baseball-research community for having the world’s largest collection of research materials that were kept out the public’s prying eyes. Finally, sometime in the 1980s, TSN opened its archives to researchers.

Like with Cooperstown, TSN’s Research Center was open by appointment only and only to a couple of people per day. I booked the rest of the week in late April 2005 and let the archivists know ahead of time what I wanted to look at, so I could maximize my research time. So the Monday after visiting Laurie, I made the long, very boring drive down I-55 to St. Louis.

When I arrived at TSN’s offices, I again was taken aback by the inauspicious location of what had at one time been Baseball’s Bible and essential weekly reading, but what by the 21st Century had become inconsequential.

TSN long had moved from its prominent Downtown headquarters to a nondescript suburban office park. The building looked like a cross between a dentist’s office and a California apartment building. You were buzzed through the front door into an open atrium. TSN’s office was located on the second floor, so you’d climb the stairs and walk a covered walkway to the back of the building where TSN’s office was located. Another buzzer let you in to TSN’s waiting-room lobby, where you’d sign in. At that point, the archivist came to get you.

TSN’s offices were somewhat depressing considering the publication at one time had been essential reading to everyone in my circle. The newsroom at The Flint Journal was twice the size of TSN’s editorial department.

The Research Center itself was down a hall lined with old covers, although most were of a more recent vintage. The Research Center, like the rest of the offices, was far less impressive than you might expect. Again, I’ve worked at newspapers where the library was larger. The Research Center consisted of a desk where the archivist worked, a series of bookshelves on rollers so they could be packed tight and moved as needed to access books, two microfilm viewers and two tables for visitors.

That was fine. That’s all the room I needed. I set up my workspace like I used to in Cleveland—my clamshell MacBook with my headphones, a pad of paper to jot notes and a list of materials I wanted to pore through—and got to work. I’d work from the time it opened to the time it closed with no breaks for lunch. I needed to maximize the precious few hours I had for research.

The key for me was TSN’s collection of clip files for some 250,000 people who played minor-league baseball. If the player made it to the bigs, he might have three or four envelopes of various clips of newspapers from around the nation. If not, it might be a single article. The file also might include personal correspondence and other unique materials. Before Google News Archives, this was an invaluable resource.

It’s also no longer available. After TSN’s sale to Baseball America, the publication was moved to North Carolina and the Research Center closed. The research materials are, until further notice, back out of the public’s prying eye, and God only knows what happened to the clip files.

By the end of the week, I finished everything I set out to accomplish, so it was time to head home. The Clippers were starting a homestand on the Tuesday, so I was going to drive the extremely long and extremely boring drive from St. Louis to Columbus, when a genius idea took hold.

I didn’t HAVE to be home till Sunday, and I could just as easily drive home from Chicago on Saturday than St. Louis on Saturday. Besides, didn’t I just tell my new girlfriend I wanted to see her more frequently than, say, once a month? I decided to put that to the test and called Laurie to pitch her my idea: I’ll drive to Chicago Friday and then home to Columbus the next day. She eagerly assented.

So, less than a week after leaving, I drove back to Chicago. Laurie and I planned to meet at Miller’s Pub downtown, and I’ll never forget driving up the Lake Shore before turning onto Jackson. Seeing the Sears Tower from that angle made me realize how happy I was to be back in Chicago—and even happier that I had a great reason to be there.

You know, this thing with Laurie might just work out after all …