Seeking to retrieve lost time after watching '83 Orioles

Someone told me once that the two most evocative things, the two things that could hurtle him back to a place and time, were scents and songs. It's true. Every once in a while, I'll catch a whiff of Aliage, a 1970s-era Estee Lauder perfume that seemed to hover in the air of every sorority house during rush week my freshman year of college. And I can't hear that Lion King song, "Hakuna Matata," without thinking about 1995 and the two weeks I spent with a summer camp for kids from a tough inner-city neighborhood who nonetheless seemed so sweet and innocent when they sang along with a tape, "It means no worries for the rest of your days." But I'd add a third memory-trigger as well - the baseball team. Not a team generically, as in love-dem-O's, but a team of a specific season, a serendipitous sum of its parts, a group that for... [read full story]