I lost twenty-five years when the lush, kelly green grass came into view. I was ten years old again excitedly entering the concrete monster that was witness to the history of the Detroit Tigers and their games. A hundred years worth of baseball's best players, legends and teams had played on that corner.
It was now the last game of Tiger Stadium's career before closing for an uncertain future. Our team would have a new home, built and designed to make it attractive for everyone, whether they loved the game or not.
As I got to my box seats, I scanned my binoculars through the bleachers for familiar faces. The friends I had shared this romance with who knew that where you sat had nothing to do with what you took from the game, and meant much less than with who. I spotted my brother, who had lost his twenty-five years before he left his house. He was pounding his mitt some 475 feet from home plate, sitting with friends on the old wooden bleachers in upper right centerfield. I shared my first game with my brother three decades ago and realized I needed the bleachers, and needed to share.
As I headed toward those "right behind second base" seats to join him, I remembered those Saturday afternoon bus rides through the littered old Detroit neighborhoods on way to the Trumbull and Michigan Avenue corner. Trips that wouldn't normally be sanctioned by our nervous mother had she not known how a part of our lives names like Al Kaline, Mickey Lolich, and Bill Freehan had become. It was a simpler time of board games, four channels on T.V., and the ongoing campaign of the Tigers. The days when ball players would leave the park as people, and walk with you to their cars. They understood the lifetime positive impression they had the power to give.
Jim Northrup had been traded to the much hated Baltimore Orioles in 1974 and I'll always remember the feeling as though a good friend had been captured by the Russians. After a night game versus the Orioles later that year, I approached and received what I thought was his autograph. After reading the signature, I told him how the Detroit fans appreciated and missed him, as only a twelve year old can. Tim Nordbrook, the rookie O's infielder who had just handed it to me, spent a good natured fifteen minutes with me explaining what his name was, agreeing how Mr. Northrup must miss Detroit, and how glad he'd be to pass the message on to him.
My Dad and I had our last good talk at the ballpark one year before he died. We had grown apart in my adulthood when our choices, goals and opportunities went in different directions. While we didn't uncover the meaning of life, the universal language of sports and the opinions we shared told us we still had a lot in common. Dad was funny as he complained about the cost of a beer. Now a frail sixty-five years old, he told the pretty girls seated in front of us that they could have a bite of his hotdog, if only he could have a sip of their beer.
I hadn't cried at a baseball game since catching a line shot with my head in third grade. But seeing my friends and my six foot seven inch brother eagerly pounding his mitt put me in a sentimental mood. Tiger Stadium was my friend, and I had averaged about ten games a year over the last five years. Leaving work early to catch the sparsely attended 3:30 weekday games. Sitting with a girlfriend and reflecting on life in the empty aisles between cheers for the game and the excitement of sitting in a museum to watch a baseball game. My seats were always upper deck at those games, strategically placed between home and first base, for my life long ambition of catching a foul ball. No matter how old you get, risking your life to catch a three dollar ball hit by someone who puts his pants on the same way as you, somehow, was always a big part of the day. For it was a souvenir of passion, and a gift from an old friend.
So my brother and I watched, surrounded by people who were lifelong friends we had never met. We watched the scoreboard and played the baseball trivia game between innings. If we didn't know the answer, our bewildered gaze gave all who watched us the knowledge that at some point we did know. Perhaps we lost the answer in our mind's files of work, home and our reality. Those with the bewildered silence, or confident answer, were a part of the fraternity who saw the game as a science, an evening out, and a respect for harnassed talent that can take an average man in all other respects, and make him a hero and a legend.
Baseball gods were shining on us with the warm September evening as players and legends from past eras gathered on the field after the final out. Men who at one time or another worked magic with a bat and a ball, a glove, or a pair of cleats. Now showing the mortality of life and proving they were in fact, just men.
We talked longingly for the old park, for no matter how often you went, it was always there to welcome you, and always held the mystery of the game at it's feet. No two games of all the millions baseball has played, have ever been the same, and that would continue. But what wouldn't continue would be this concrete monster's personality on those games. The short, rightfield "porch" that had turned many a fly out into game winning homeruns. The 440 foot centerfield that swallowed up homeruns, and gave them back to the fielders. The height of the decks and their effects on the wind. And all that foul territory that made stars or fools of first basemen.
It was more than the end of a legacy, and more than the end of a friendship. It was the beginning of a new era. One which catered to corporations, comfort, and higher prices. A new era of entertainment in Detroit masked as baseball, with security escorts and gates for players to and from their cars. And for new customers who didn't need bleachers.
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Posted February 25, 2002.
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