Matt Hanley, "Book takes a look at Chicago baseball." The Kendall County Beacon News.

The best of us never get over our first baseball game. We never escape the compulsion to fill out a scorecard and never stop breaking in our glove. We still remember our first autograph and know way too much information about our favorite player.

John O'Donnell is one of those guys.

Since his first game on June 30, 1964, the Aurora resident and Benet Academy English teacher has been hooked on baseball. O'Donnell's mom took him to that first Cubs game. A week later, his father took him to his first Sox game. (Surprisingly, both wins.)

Those initial impressions of the in-person baseball are now the opening chapters in O'Donnell's first book, "Like Night and Day: A Look at Chicago Baseball 1964-1969."

"I've read so many baseball books I thought it was time to write one myself," he said.

Using newspaper archives and his old scorecards- he kept one in every game- he spent 18 years researching the games. O'Donnell already knew the sights and smells, he just needed the facts and figures.

"It's baseball- you're going to remember this," said O'Donnell, who has also worked as a vendor for the Kane County Cougars for 20 years. "When you're doing something you love, you hold on to it and lock it away."

"Growing up in Chicago, I had no idea fields were this big, " he said. "I was just overcome by it. Just the distance it took from home to first, it seemed forever."

The book is filled with a child's wonder. He marvels at the bright colors of the uniforms (he had seen them only on a black and white TV) and the fact that a word like "Cincinnati" could fit on the front of jersey. He also wondered if the Sox had any chance against the Angels- surely God would favor such a team.

"It's one of those things where people come back and they have a smile on their face," O'Donnell said.

O'Donnell published the book himself and since then, he's been promoting the book on the Web site nightanddaybook.com, through word of mouth and in a few local bookstores.

Of course the book ends in 1969, a notorious year for Cubs fans. But O'Donnell didn't stop there because of the Cub's collapse.

"I thought the '70s would start a new decade, and the next book," he said.