This is Mike Shannon's pencil

Mike Shannon, 1939-2023

This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon used to bat .288/.339/.462 during the course of the 1966 season and, when the rent was due, sink every stripe off the break.

This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon used to captain a gondola — handsomely crafted from the heartwood of that same pencil — along every nautical spice route. His passengers found the…