Joseph Gallo

And the thing, though, that A.G.

and I loved the most about Phil Rizzuto was his stream of consciousness storytelling.

Stories used to spring from him out of seemingly nowhere.

You never knew where they were going to go.

You never knew where they were going to end.

In fact, they were so epic that Rizzuto himself, in his own scorecard over a particular inning, would write the initials WW, which stood for Wasn't Watching.

Anyway, one day, AJ invites me over to his house, and he presents me with a gift.

It's a book, and the book is called Oh Holy Cow.

And what these two writers have done, they've taken Rizzuto's broadcast, and they've transcribed them, and they culled and edited them down to the stories that we both loved.

And he said he got the book because he saw it, he thought of me, he wanted me to have it, and he knew I collected books and loved books and I'd appreciate it.

And then he sat me down.

And he said, I have something to tell you.

I've been to the doctors, and I have been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

And a month later, AJ dies.

So now fast forward 25 years, and my mother, who is a widow who lives alone in the house that I grew up in, she suffers a massive stroke.

And she survives, but she ends up in a nursing home.

And I am taxed with the job of breaking down my childhood home.

Now, anyone who's ever had to do this, it's a sad, emotionally exhausting, horrible experience.

And one of the jobs that I have to do is I have to do something with boxes and boxes of books that I have accumulated over 25 years.

I live in an apartment.