(This column ran originally Sunday June 16 in The Times and The News-Star.)

An online baseball group I asked to join asked me a question, maybe to determine whether or not I was a robot and maybe to see if I really wanted to join.

The question: “What was your most interesting baseball experience?”

Not counting the trips I’ve made with Little League teams — coached my final game 15 years ago next month — my most interesting baseball experience was Dog Days of Summer, a few early-1990s trips with about 10 other guys who, like me at the time, were Promising Young Men. We lined up a few ballparks over the span of a few days and off we went.

That’s what I told the online group, and those were enough credentials to get me in.

(There are, by the way, hundreds of online groups. Put An End To Radishes is one, no joke. Squash Brussels Sprouts is another. I’m in some baseball ones that discuss stadiums, jerseys, a certain era…I never comment, but just look at the pictures.)

Dog Days were good days. We made the front page of USA Today and everything.

All this came to mind because of Tom Seaver, the Hall of Fame pitcher who led the “Miracle Mets” to what the Associated Press called “one of the most improbable championships in American sports history” in 1969. Seaver’s family and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown revealed in March that the 74-year-old righthander is suffering from dementia and will not make any more public appearances.

Hurt me.

I was no Seaver fan as a 10-year-old in 1969 because the Mets’ miracle season ended in the Series when they beat My Team, the Baltimore Orioles, who used to be good, believe it or not. Took the Mets only five games to beat one of the best Orioles teams ever.

My guy was fellow righthanded pitcher Jim Palmer, who was 16-4 for the Orioles in 1969 and would rattle off five straight 20-win seasons beginning in 1970. He finished his career with eight 20-win seasons, is the only pitcher in history to win a World Series game in three different decades, and entered the Hall of Fame in 1990, two years before Seaver.

I buried the Seaver hatchet in March when Palmer tweeted this after hearing about Seaver’s condition: “I always strove to be like Tom both on and off the field. He’s ‘Tom Terrific’ for a reason.”

I first softened to Tom Terrific back in 1992, one of our early Dog Days trips. We’d been to Shea Stadium that afternoon, then had traveled in a rented van to Cooperstown and a hotel by the lake, maybe three blocks from the Hall. But this next thing was, to me, the cherry on the hot fudge sundae:

The woman who ran the hotel of course didn’t know us. I’d told her we might be midnight getting there. She said on the phone, “Raise the window of your room and I’ll leave two keys by the lamp.”

I did. And she did. We had two rooms. One was Room 41. Same as Seaver’s jersey number. He was inducted into the Hall later that summer.

Timing. Sometimes it just all works out.

Baseball was the thread of those trips, but the time itself was really about being with people you like, sharing an experience. “Baseball” — or whatever you enjoy, like the beach or mountains — is just the “excuse” to go.

I don’t remember much about the actual games. Instead, we go places with people because it’s about the way they make you feel. If a dad takes his son to spring training or you ride the train to St. Louis to get into Busch Stadium, it’s a little of both. But mainly, Dog Days was a feeling. Still is.

I have the guys who flew or drove in from different places and joined us in different spots to thank for that. Dog Days grew from a 10-year-old’s memory of guys like Seaver and Palmer, so I have them to thank too.

Friends who go deep-sea fishing today as men, most of them go because their dad’s or grandad’s took them long ago. No matter who’s in the boat today, that’s really who they’re still fishing with.

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By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers

A dozen Titleists would have been great — and actually, expected — but I ended up getting the greatest Father’s Day present. Ever.

The biggest question is, How did I live without this for so long? It’s called a Deebot N79W and it’s the greatest invention since the internet. Or the Automatic Teller Machine. Or TiVo. Or air conditioning. Your call.

All I know is this: Other than a refrigerator and HD TV, it’s most important thing a single male human being with two cats can possibly own.

For years, if not decades, I have searched and searched for a vacuum cleaner that would measure up to my exacting specifications. I have failed, failed again and continued to fail. I’ve even watch the infomercials of how to buy the perfect vacuum cleaner. Didn’t happen for me.

And now you’re telling me there’s a vacuum cleaner and I don’t even have to do anything?!?! That’s right boys and girls; the Deebot N79W is robotic. Charge it up, press a button and let it happ’n, cap’n.

I took the afternoon off at work just to come home and watch. This baby will whip around chair legs, ottomans, coffee tables, etc., like nobody’s business and just sweeping up as it goes along it’s merry robotic way. There hasn’t been a suction device of any kind reach under my bed since 2004. But the Deebot N79W got all up in there and then popped out looking for more action.

Carpet, bare floors … it don’t make no nevermind. And check this out — when the battery gets low, it actually makes it’s way back and climbs into the charging station like a homesick gopher.

But the question is not how could the Deebot N79W handle the cat hair but rather how could Laverne (pictured, above) and Shirley (not pictured, in hiding) handle the Deebot N79W? They don’t quite know what to make of it — it’s not exactly as cute as a ball of yarn — but they are more than a little curious. (Or course, that’s what cats are supposed to be.) Eventually, all will learn to co-exist. Hey, as long as the carpets and floors are clean, all’s good.

Still, I am left to wonder: If the Deebot N79W is so great, how much greater must a Deebot N80W be?