In this computerized era of e-mail and instant messages, songwriter Seth Swirsky is a throwback – a man who prefers old-fashioned, handwritten letters.

There’s something personal about getting a letter written in longhand instead of one produced by an ink-jet printer. So when Swirsky writes letters – and he writes plenty of them – they are done the old-fashioned way, in pen and ink.

Maybe that’s why people feel compelled to reply. In long hand, of course. Maybe it’s because Swirsky asks intriguing questions.

There was the matter of Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry’s first home run. Perry recalled manager Alvin Dark dismissing his hitting ability. “A man will land on the moon before Gaylord Perry hits a home run,” Perry quoted Dark as saying.

“The day they landed on the moon. I was pitching,” Perry wrote to Swirsky. “About 30 minutes later, I hit my first home run.”

Swirsky wondered what Beatle Paul McCartney thought when he was in the stands at Yankee Stadium for the first time and heard one of his songs played over the loudspeaker during a playoff game in 2001.

He was curious about what pinch-hitter Gates Brown did with a mid-game snack when he was rushed into action by the Detroit Tigers.

He wrote Shawn Green of the Los Angeles Dodgers, asking what it was like to be one of very few Jewish players to reach the major leagues.

And he wrote President George Bush – the first one – asking about his meeting with Babe Ruth.

In each case, Swirsky got a handwritten answer and included them in his latest book, “Something To Write Home About.” The book, third in a series of baseball letters by Swirsky, is an anthem to the game and its place in the fabric of America.

Swirsky was watching the 2001 playoffs on television when the camera caught McCartney just as the loudspeaker played, “I Saw Her Standing There.”

“He started dancing and singing,” Swirsky said. “I asked if he liked hearing his music in expected places.”

McCartney called the experience “pretty cool,” and confided that the game made him an instant fan of American baseball.

Brown was one of baseball’s best pinch-hitters from 1963-75. Swirsky asked him about his most memorable pinch-hit, one achieved with some unusual excess baggage.

While munching contentedly on a hot dog at the end of the Tigers dugout one afternoon, Brown suddenly was summoned by manager Mayo Smith. Knowing the snack would disappear if he left it behind on the bench, Brown stuffed it inside his shirt and grabbed a bat.

“Of all the times I didn’t care if I got a hit, would you believe I hit one up the gap and had to go headfirst into second,” Brown wrote. “When I got up, I had mustard and ketchup all over the front of my jersey.”

Smith was not amused and fined Brown $100.

Green told Swirsky about how he followed the examples of Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax and does not play on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year on the Jewish calendar.

“I always remembered the decisions the two greatest Jewish players made,” he wrote. “I’m not trying to be “the next Greenberg or Koufax,’ but I’m trying to do my part as a Jewish ballplayer.”

Swirsky also remembered a unique meeting at home plate one day in 1996. When Green came to bat, he greeted catcher Jesse Levis, another Jewish player. As the two talked, umpire Al Clark, also Jewish, joined the conversation.

Green had no idea Clark was Jewish and was still digesting that fact when the ump finished calling him out on strikes.

“This is one memory of baseball I will never forget,” he told Swirsky.

Baseball runs through the Bush family. The current president was a one-time owner of the Texas Rangers and his father was a first baseman and captain of the team during his college days at Yale.

The elder Bush recalled Ruth visiting Yale Field in 1946. “Riddled with throat cancer, he could barely speak,” Bush wrote. “But it was his very commanding presence that I’ll never forget. Bent over, his body wasted, he was still the great Babe Ruth that every baseball loving kid in America wanted to emulate.

“I had a lot of wonderful moments as vice president and president – great seats at great events; but the Babe at Yale topped them all.”