You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

-- Jim Bouton

Well, I'm off to New York on Wednesday to say goodbye to Yankee and Shea stadiums.

I've got a Wednesday double-header planned. Yankee Stadium for a day game starting at 1 p.m. Then over to Shea Stadium for a night game.

Should be fun.

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TRIPS TO THE MOUND: I'm not they only one thinking baseball this summer vacation.

Kelsey and Davis Mitchell send a great postcard from Boston showing baseball's Fenway Park from the air and another from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., showing the plaque of Honus Wagner and the suggestion "Shoeless Joe Jackson belongs here!"

They also had a blast in Hershey, Pa.

Bill and Gaily Shirley, of Augusta, send a baseball postcard from Rhode Island showing the home of the Pawtucket Red Sox. They watched "The Iron Pigs beat the PawSox."

Milton Villemain is visiting brother Herb and family in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. He sends me a great card showing the Akron Aeros baseball park.

And, while it's not baseball, Joel Osterbrink, of Grovetown, is enjoying a sporting trip to visit family in the upper Midwest and exhorts us all with "Go You Packers!"

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MORE MAIL: The Williamses are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in Savannah. (Betty must have picked the spot.)

E.J. and Crew say Hawaii is beauty everywhere you look. Pat and Wayne Fuller were in Alaska but say the weather was not clear enough to see Mount McKinley .

Anita and Wendell Tanner and Anna Lee Woodruff were in Oklahoma for a family reunion. They think Oklahoma City's "Bricktown" concept would work well in Augusta.

John Phillips , of North Augusta, sends this news from Nashville.

"As director of the Garden City Barbershop Chorus, it was very exciting to be in Nashville to celebrate the grand opening of our new international HQ building. Several other members of the Augusta chapter are here also for our annual convention."

Virgina Lamb , now of Mankato, Minn., sends a card to say she still keeps up with Augusta on the Internet.

The Zimmerman family, of Grovetown, was in New England, where the weather was cool, for a few days. Enjoying Hilton Head were Jean Hamilton , of North Augusta; Ashton Marcano, of Martinez; and Leah Duffield, of Evans.

Reid Robinson is attending a pipe organ convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

The Badkes -- Mike , Ann , Michael and Juliana -- had a great time in Pennsylvania's Amish country, in Philadelphia, and at a family reunion in Maine -- "lobster, rocky coast, ocean breezes."

Sandra and Shirley Johnson , of Augusta, send a card from Arkansas to report that they are on "Blues Highway 49." Another comes from Mississippi and "Blues Highway 61." And a third comes from Tennessee. And a fourth from Alabama.

TODAY'S BASEBALL JOKE: They're thinking of combining the designated driver and the designated hitter. After the seventh inning the DH drives all the drunk fans home.