Backyard Tiger
Winter is over. It’s the time of year where the temperatures crack the 50Fº mark. Every year, when the weather teases me with this bit of warmth I begin thinking about baseball. I am not what you would call a baseball fan. At least not a fan in the same classification of fandom as those who memorize every stat of every player on every team. Or those who have bubble gum trading cards dating back to childhood or collections of memorabilia like miniature bats or pennants or bobble-heads, although I did have a miniature bat that was handed out during “Bat Day” when the Tigers played at the old stadium at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Trumbull Street in downtown Detroit. And I’m certainly not a fan like those who are ravenously loyal to a particular team to the point where they spend their spare income on tickets for home games or even go so far as to spend money traveling to away games. Or buying those official uniforms with the numbers and names of their favorite players. Or hang out at the players entrance to get an autograph.
My fandom are the images in my head of players and games of the past — a few of the present — but mostly of the years or decades gone by. And all of them about the Detroit Tigers, in particular, the World Series Winning Detroit Tigers from 1968 and 1984.
I do take on temporary loyalties depending upon where I live. I rooted for LA teams when I went to school in Hollywood in the 1970’s and later when my wife and I moved to Long Beach, California, during the early 1980’s. When our growing family lived in the San Francisco Bay Area I rooted for the Giants and sometimes the Oakland A’s. But I always find myself longing for another Tiger World Series. Just one more. Even as a flip-flop fan of baseball teams, I still reserve a permanent place in my heart for the Detroit Tigers.
Wherever we have lived I would find myself channel surfing during the season to find a Tigers game being broadcast. We lived in England for a few years and during the summer months we missed hearing the sounds of baseball on the radio or watching the television broadcasts. We subscribed, for a while, to a sports channel for ex-pats that purported to show American sports teams in baseball, football, hockey, and basketball. But the events we wanted to watch were always televised in realtime, meaning I was either asleep for the twilight and night games or at work in Central London during the day games. When we moved back to the US we were happy to have access to baseball again. Cable and streaming services now allow me to watch the Tigers for a fee. A hefty fee at that.
Yet for all this access to baseball I now have the game remains centered on my memories. Like when I was a kid, maybe 9 or 10 years old. In the summertime I would spend many happy hours with my glove throwing a tennis ball against the side of the house. I’d throw it hard so that it was a challenge to run and catch the rebound. I’d throw it low to catch line drives. Lower still to catch grounders — then spin around and throw the deftly caught ball to the first baseman (which was a sling chair on the back porch). I’d throw the tennis ball high up on the second story of the house as hard as I could, then I’d run like hell to catch the rebounding fly ball. A ball hit so hard as to head for right field (my favorite position). I would make death defying leaps to catch the ball before it went soaring over the neighbors wire separating our properties. A few times those death defying attempts met that fence— and 50 years on I still have a few scars from those collisions.
We didn’t have air conditioning back then. Air conditioning is something your parents had if they were very wealthy. We weren’t poor, but we certainly weren’t air conditioning rich. So, during those warm spring and summer months all the windows would be wide opened. On the hot days we have multiple window fans running that helped cool the house a bit — especially when there wasn’t a breeze to give a moments of relief from the heat and humidity.
Michigan heat and humidity could not be escaped underneath the shade of trees. Sometimes a cool basement would provide a bit of relief, but the dampness of the summer humidity would hang in the darkness of those subterranean rooms. The dampness would penetrate the cinder block walls forming the sort of mold and mildew you could smell. Mold and mildew that were attacked by my parents with chemical killers on a regular basis. The combination of smells would linger until autumn would arrive and dry out the basement.
It was the sort of dampness that was so thick that dehumidifiers could not pull enough moisture out of the air to prevent the mold and mildew from forming. That was part of living in the Midwest. I know Southerners talk about their heat and humidity as if it is the most oppressive on the planet. And it is. But it is different when you grow up with that level of Southern summer heat; the type that pounds you and takes your breath away the second you walk outside. The type of heat and humidity that drenches you in sweat the instant you step away from a fan or walk out of an air conditioned building. If you are born in the South you are used to it. You expect it. If you move from the Northern states to the South, as I did for a spell, you also learn to accept the misery of those summers but you never get used to it.
For us Midwesterners that level of summer heat only lives for a short time; mostly those dog days of July through August. Yet, because of baseball and the freedom of summer, even those days were joyful and now provide splendid memories. Those memories of backyard barbecues; my Dad hovering over a hot grille cooking steaks or burgers or hot dogs. Mom in the kitchen boiling water for corn on the cob and chopping up fruit for a salad. In my head I hear Nat King Cole singing, “Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer”.
I loved those days in my backyard baseball field. Those hot, sticky days; the ones when the windows of the house were wide open and my Dad would be working in his studio. His green and white Grundig radio would be tuned to WJR in Detroit so he could listen to George Kell and Ernie Harwell give the play by play of a Tiger game. “Turn it up!” I’d shout from the backyard and, of course, he would reach over and angle the radio to face the window a bit more and then crank up the volume. The radio would be further amplified by the old black fan that we had that faced out the window so that he could create a cross-breeze from another open window in his studio. And it would also carry wafts of smells from his pipe and his paints: water colors, or oils, or acrylic or whatever medium he happened to need for a particular illustration job.
On those days I would pretend I was one of the players (usually Al Kaline) and when there was a long hit to right field and I would throw the ball hard and high so that the rebound would sail high overhead and I would have to run and jump high to catch the ball; all, of course, in a vain attempt to imitate what was actually happening on the radio.
When I was a young teen I graduated from the backyard and tennis balls to hardballs and a bat. I would venture to the ball field of our elementary school through a large hole cut into a tall fence that separated the school property from private yards. It was our neighbor who cut the hole in the fence to prevent us from going on his property to get to the school yard. He was a despicable man who hated kids as much as we hated him.
He was a selfish and a devoted right winger who, in the fall, would violate every city ordinance and burn leaves in a grassless area next to the fence. Unlike the smell of my Dad’s burning pipe, this smell caused headaches, and created so much soot that the following spring we would have to hose down the side of the house facing the area where he had burned bushels of leaves. We complained to him on multiple occasions. He didn’t stop. We went to the police and filed a complaint but as this “neighbor” was a volunteer fireman (and Chief of the fire department to boot) nothing was done. My mother, not one to ever back down from a fight, finally had had enough and she confronted him with a shovel in one hand and the threat of a lawsuit if he didn’t stop burning. When that didn’t work she called the fire department (the same one where he was acting Chief) and they came and put the fire out. He wasn’t Chief much longer after that incident.
Anyway, I’d grab my bat and a bucket full of hard balls I had obtained from scouring the Little League fields near the Village Green in Franklin, MI and walk through the hole in the fence and on to the school baseball field. I would spend hours grabbing a ball out of the bucket, tossing it up in the air and then swinging so hard in an attempt to knock the cover off the ball. When the bucket was empty I’d go pick up all the balls and do it all over again. Those were happy days for me.
But then something else had grabbed my interests. While I was still in elementary school I began playing music. First the trombone — I sucked at it I’m sure, but in my mind I was playing accurate versions of Seventy-Six Trombones from the Music Man. Then I moved over to percussion. Well, to be accurate, it was a snare drum and I also played the bass drum and cymbals in the school bands. My private teacher was Rex Hall, a wonderful teacher in the Detroit area who was both patient and encouraging. I played percussion in school bands throughout the rest of my elementary school years and in the first couple of years of middle school (back then we called it Junior High).
Then music began to take a bigger hold on my life. Music was always part of our family as my Mother and Fathers relationship began with music. Especially the great works of classical music and operatic composers. Before baseball game broadcasts, “Saturday at the Met” was on the radio every week. On weeknights I lay in bed as Mom and Dad, as they often did, ended their day by putting on a recording of Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Elgar, Stravinsky, Brahms, Vivaldi and countless others. I would listen until I would fall asleep. I became quite good at identifying many of these musical passages as well. Some of my junior high and high school friends were a somewhat impressed that I could identify so many of these great compositions after only a few bars. But they were more impressed by people who owned a Marshall stack, a Les Paul, an EchoPlex and a CryBaby Wah-Wah than they were with my elementary knowledge of classical music. I’ll admit it, those toys were more interesting to me at the time, too.
The bands of the British Invasion, Hendrix, Janis Joplin and so many more were at the heart of my burgeoning interest in pop and rock. I listened to everything. It became habit to tune my radio to WABX, WRIF or other local rock stations first thing in the morning. They were on in the car. I spent my money earned by doing chores around the neighborhood on albums. As I listened to the radio or to my records I would try to play all the same rhythms and drum parts on a practice pad, or sitting on my bed and pounding away at the bed spread sending dust flying all over the room. I remember wanting a drum kit but there was no way we could afford one so I built one out of oatmeal boxes and pans for toms, a large bucket for a kick drum, cymbals made from coffee can lids nailed onto push broom poles I “borrowed” from the garage. The only real drum was my Ludwig snare — and it was quite a bit louder than the rest of the “kit” to say the least.
Then, in 1967, I got my first guitar. I had been wanting to play guitar since the Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show but as I hadn’t stuck with the trombone for long and my interest in drums was beginning to wane it took a couple of years of saving money and a healthy doese of pleading and begging before I finally got one. The story of that guitar and how it came into my possession and what happened to it is another story for another time.
But getting that guitar was like opening another door. A door that has led to a hallway filled with other doors that lead to rooms each filled with wonder. A lifetime of doors to open and explore.
It wasn’t long before my bat and all those tennis and hardballs made their way into boxes in the basement. I still have the glove. It takes me back every time I see it. The leather still has that smell of summer. Al Kaline autographed that glove for me but the signature has long since faded. I have my Dad’s pipe — it smells of his tobacco and reminds me of all his life lessons. I have those memories of my youth, of baseball, of my early explorations in music, and of my Tigers. I’m still exploring musical doors and now, in retirement living in Idaho, I seek Tiger broadcasts, sometimes while playing a guitar.
Baseball and music always awakens the child within me. I never want to lose that sense of wonder.
___________________
Authors note: As I was finishing this story I learned that my baseball idol, Al Kaline passed away on this day, April 6, 2020. He was 85. He played 22 seasons with the Tigers signing with them right after high school and was playing in the majors a few weeks after signing. He never played in the minors.
