Slow News Week - DHL Dan XLIII

When we're in the middle of summer and it's baseball's All-Star week, and Shank doesn't feel like writing about that particular game, he'll mail something in instead.

Used a Rolodex lately?

Didn’t think so. For the benefit of young folks, a Rolodex is a plastic wheel loaded with alphabetized cards that store phone numbers of people you may need to contact. Watch “Mad Men.’’ Don Draper’s secretary always flips through her Rolodex after Don asks her to reach a client.

I’m not a Rolodex guy, but I still travel with a black leather “At-A-Glance” address and telephone book that I pull out of my work bag every time I need to call Curt Schilling or Jonathan Kraft. It is at this moment that some wiseguy usually asks me if I’m about to dial Austin Powers or Marty McFly. We know that everybody now stores contact information in their phones. Almost everybody, that is.

I was clutching my beloved address book while sitting in the palatial offices of the Globe sports department recently when one of my bosses trumped me in a big way.

“Wait until you get a load of this,’’ he said, as he pivoted in his chair, reached to a shelf behind where he was sitting, and hoisted a metal cabinet drawer that was stocked with about 500 weathered index cards. “This is the old Globe sports directory,’’ he said. “One of the secretaries gave it to me when she retired and I’ve never been able to throw it away.’’