I enjoy attending Arkansas Travelers baseball games in these waning days of summer. I realize I'm one of the few.

Back when the Travelers were locally owned and I was vice president of the club, our staff hated late August and early September games. As the start of the school year approaches each August, it's as if someone flips a switch. Parents stop bringing their kids to the ballpark as they get into school year mode. Thoughts turn to football. There aren't enough people in the stands some nights to justify the light bill.

My kids are grown, and I work in downtown Little Rock. These final games of the season are relaxing for me. There's no traffic, one can park almost at the front gate, and lines are short at concession stands. Hot dogs and peanuts serve as my supper. Things are especially easy-going these days after city officials in North Little Rock finally came to their senses and signed a lease to keep the Travelers at Dickey-Stephens Park for the next 20 years. That hopefully means I'll be able to enjoy Travelers baseball until I'm in my late 80s.

My best day here this season came in late winter. The grass was just starting to show a few green blades. I was asked to meet with a film crew making a documentary on baseball great Dick Allen. Also known then as Richie Allen, he's the man who integrated the Travelers in 1963, and the film crew was interested in hearing more about that year in Little Rock.

I was asked if I had seen Allen play. My honest answer: "I don't know."

When I was growing up in Arkadelphia, my father brought me to several Travelers games each year. But I would have been age 3 in the summer of 1963 and thus have no memories of that season. I am, however, fascinated by the long, rich history of the Travelers and by the civil rights movement in

Arkansas. I read everything I can get my hands on when it comes to those subjects. I knew enough about that season to speak to the filmmakers.

I was quick to tell them: "I wish Jim Bailey was still alive to talk to you."

Bailey, a legendary sportswriter and baseball expert, wrote for decades for the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. As a boy, I rushed to the driveway each morning to pick up the Gazette and read what Bailey had to say. Other Arkansas boys my age read Orville Henry first for his Razorback coverage. But Bailey covered my beloved Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference during the school year and the Travelers in the summer. So it was Bailey first for me.

On Saturday, while most Arkansans are watching college football games, the Travelers' staff will be handing out Dick Allen bobbleheads at Dickey-Stephens to those who haven't had enough baseball yet. There will also be a jersey retirement ceremony.

This seems like an appropriate time to tell the story of Allen's season in Little Rock, with a lot of help from Bailey.

"Since the baseball park now called Ray Winder Field opened 65 years ago, the Arkansas Travelers have played approximately 4,600 home games," Bailey wrote for the Democrat-Gazette in April 1997. "Just one should be considered truly historic. On April 16, 1963, the Travelers started a season and an era with what a game account in the next day's........

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