For most of my life, I've loved baseball and newspapers.

I trace the roots of both those passions to the mid-1970s, when I was about 10 or 11 years old. At that time, my dad preached for a small Church of Christ in Elkin, N.C., a small town about 45 miles west of Winston-Salem.

The Cincinnati Reds — the Big Red Machine — were my team, and pre-gambling-scandal Pete Rose was my favorite player. One time, I wrote Rose a fan letter; I was overjoyed when I received an autographed picture from him in the mail. (That was several years before my family moved to the Lone Star State, where I the Texas Rangers became my team.)

In those days, a boy wanting to keep up with his favorite team couldn't buy an MLB.com package or Google for the score online. A few major-league games a week were televised — Saturday afternoon on NBC and Monday night on ABC, if I recall correctly — but the Reds were featured only a handful of times a year.

So anytime I got my allowance, I'd buy a few packs of baseball cards and the latest edition of the Winston-Salem Journal. I'd memorize the previous season's stats from the back of the baseball cards and check the Journal's sports section to see how the Reds were doing in the standings. Often, the score from the previous night's game wouldn't make the next day's paper. It would be marked "late game," much to the chagrin of a boy who had just spent a precious quarter (I think that's what the daily edition cost back then) on the paper.

After looking for the baseball scores first, I'd go ahead and read the entire Journal — and thus began my lifelong love of headlines and news on the printed page.

Why do I mention all of the above? Credit (or blame) my friend Lisa Brewer, who lives in Wilkesboro, N.C.

In the late 1970s, my dad preached for a little Church of Christ in Elkin, N.C., a small town about 45 miles west of Winston-Salem.

We lived there for a year or two when I was in elementary school. I must have been 10 or 11 years old.

I remember that we lived in a church-provided home with a large basement where my brother Scott, sister Christy and I enjoyed playing hide-and-seek. I remember that a neighbor man owned a small store and always gave me a 5-cent-a-pack discount on baseball cards because my dad was a minister. I remember that we had a pet guinea pig named Snowball (she was white, as you might have guessed).

I remember that adults used to smoke cigarettes in the church parking lot after services, and nobody thought anything of it because we lived in tobacco country. I remember that the first time I experienced a shopping mall or a Chick-fil-A came on a trip to the big city of Winston-Salem. I remember that two Catholic popes died one right after the other in 1978 and kept interrupting my cartoons with news reports.

My time in Elkin was 35-plus years ago, and I don't think about it much anymore.

But my memories came floating back this week when I came across a Wall Street Journal story about two twin brothers raised in that same town.

After a home run, a baseball player looks to the sky — might something religious be occurring?

A Catholic priest, an Anglican bishop and a Baptist mom walk into a North Carolina family home ...