I keep getting more and more from the Mickey Mantle biography.

I read that Mantle loved Roy Clark's "Yesterday When I Was Young," which was a hit record in 1968 as Mantle's baseball career was ending. Indeed, he asked Clark if he would sign it at his funeral.

It was a lovely song -- popular when I was 18 -- and of course it's a song I hear very differently at age 61. I actually just learned today that it wasn't Clark's song, that there was actually an earlier, lovelier version of it by Charles Aznavour, and even though the great French singer did a version of the song in English, the original version was called "Hier encore."

I found a pretty version of it on YouTube, from a recent Aznavour album called "Duos," in which he performed the song with Elton John.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HqwPsEhClU&amp;feature=related

The two actually did the song in English -- as "Yesterday When I Was Young" -- and in French as "Hier Encore." I think the French version is prettier.

Also more poignant.

It's funny, because when I first heard Clark's song as an 18-year-old, on a gut level I never imagined there would ever be a "yesterday when <em>I</em> was young."

When I was 18, only two people who had meant anything to me had died -- a maiden aunt and my great-grandmother. I suppose I knew my grandparents wouldn't live forever, but it is truly strange for me to write this and realize that every one of my grandparents has been gone now for more than 20 years.

I am a lucky man, I know. I still have one parent who is alive; in fact, today is my mother's birthday. All of my siblings and nearly all of my first cousins are still alive. All my close friends are still around, and nearly all the women who ever meant anything to me (at least the ones I'm still aware of) are doing fine.

But yesterday, when I was young, there were so many songs still waiting to be sung.