1999 Charles River Review: The King of Baseball

Our slightly mangled (my fault, as Jay loved to remind everyone) silver Chevy Cavalier careened down the interstate on a hot June afternoon, leaving a trail of gray exhaust in its wake. It was late morning and already the radio DJs were saying it would top 90 degrees. We rolled the windows down. Jay made air shapes with his arms as the sun beat down on our pale legs, making them stick to the black upholstery. The wind whipped through the car, bringing in the smell of burning rubber. I belted out the words to a U2 song and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel.

I drove. I always drove whenever I could finagle the keys from him. He used to give in with a shake of his head, still amazed that the state of Michigan would allow someone with such limited dexterity and such a blatant disregard for the speed limit to own and operate a moving vehicle. I'd smile and readjust the seat to fit my short legs.

"Let's go over the line-up again," he said.

I was ready for this quiz. He had been tutoring me in the art of the Tiger's line-up since he was a wise seven-year-old and I was a naïve girl of five, blissfully unaware of things like baseball and the importance of stats. I was still pretty ignorant at 18.

"Jack Morris is pitching, and he's having a streak," I replied, mentally scanning the sports page I'd memorized that morning. "Lou Whitaker is at second. Alan Trammel is catching . . ."

"Ugh! He's a shortstop. He's been our shortstop for years! That was a freebie! How do you forget these things?"

How did he remember? Year after year. Trade after trade. Injury after injury. It seemed a remotely cruel, and essentially futile, exercise.

As soon as the line-up was familiar, someone got traded, and I'd have to start all over again.

"Oh, well," I said. "You can't win 'em all."

Jay shook his head. It was a losing battle, but he kept trying to fight it anyway. Baseball was his passion. He assumed that I would follow his lead, as I did in almost everything else. Eventually, he was quite sure, baseball would be my sport, too. He waited for my passion to kick in and tried to prod it a bit.

He dutifully signed me up for Girls' Little League. He tutored me in baseball cards with the fury of a general before battle. He dragged me along on each pilgrimage to Tiger Stadium and tried to teach me how to keep score. He had me play Home Run Derby with his friends, who grudgingly allowed a girl to play.

Nothing seemed to work. In the three years that I was a loyal member of the Flushing Florists, we won one game, and I was away at camp for the win. At Tiger Stadium, I was far more interested in the sticks of cotton candy floating by and the fight that appeared to be breaking out in the bleachers. During Home Run Derby I somehow always ended up guarding right field, alarmingly close to the Duchamp's property, home of a large, mangy, drooling dog who undoubtedly had rabies. I was picking dandelions the only time a ball sailed my way.

He flipped out the U2 tape, over my objections.

"Pregame," was all he said.

I knew not to intercede. To my brother, this was a ritual as sacred as penance on Good Friday. He scanned down the AM dial. The droning commentaries of talk show hosts were cut short by prickly static with every flip of the dial. Then the familiar voice cut through the din.

"Welcome to Tiger baseball. This is Ernie Harwell here on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon at Tiger Stadium. The Tigers are hot and ready to take on the rival Indians. We've got manager Sparky Anderson in the booth with us today . . ."

That voice was as familiar to me as my own front door. Gravelly and deep, yet soothing. Ernie Harwell was the sound of summer. Whenever there was a game, there was a radio with Ernie's voice coming through loud and clear. Jay (and I, through a thin wall) fell asleep on hot August nights as Ernie counted down the strikes. Ernie accompanied us on trips to Ohio to visit my mother's family, fading out when we finally crossed the bridge to Cleveland. Ernie's voice hummed rhythmically with the scratch of our rakes on fall afternoons, as Jay hoped for a break, a pennant, a championship.

Back then, before cable television presented every game in Technicolor glory, we saw it all through Ernie's eyes. My brother would sit on the porch, feet dangling from a green bench, absent-mindedly pulling apart a dandelion as he listened to the count. In moments of desperate summer boredom, I would join him. Ernie's voice floated between us, dancing through the screen windows that separated us from the radio.

"The game is tied 'two to two' here in the ninth inning," Ernie began. "The Tigers need this win to stay alive. Alan Trammel will step up to home plate . . ."

The birdfeeder in front of us becomes an oversized home plate umpire who dusts off the dirt on a large gray rock, as our Alan steps up to the plate.

". . . the fans are in a frenzy here. Kirk Gibson, the winning run, is waiting on second base . . ."

The wind whips through the trees surrounding the yard, shaking a few weak leaves to the ground. A lone pine tree seems to lead off on second.

". . . the wind-up, and the pitch . . ."

A bat cracks on the radio. A tree limb breaks somewhere in the woods.

". . . the ball is hit deep to left field. Gibson is rounding third. The third base coach is waving him on . . ."

A tomato plant at the edge of the garden frantically waves the runner toward the birdfeeder.

". . . the outfielder has dropped the ball! Gibson slides home. He's safe by a mile. The Tigers have won the game, folks!"

Ernie's voice squeals with excitement. In Gibson's absence, Jay slides into the birdfeeder, narrowly avoiding a knee full of splinters. I, his only fan, shriek and begin flipping cartwheels like a Dallas Cowboys' cheerleader. Jay stops.

"You can't flip cartwheels in Tiger Stadium!"

"Why not?" I ask and end with a triumphant round-off and a smirk.

Jay shakes his head.

I pulled the Cavalier up to Tiger Stadium, and it coughed a final cloud of exhaust as I eased it into a parking space. We walked across the parking lot with the other fans--kids carrying baseball mitts, drunken men in painted blue and orange faces, an old couple in matching hats. Our motley crew walked together toward the architectural relic that looked like a plastic wedding cake floating in a sea of asphalt. The strips of white sheet metal that covered the exterior blinded our eyes in the glare of the noonday sun. It was a monstrosity to my eyes. A beholden image to his.

Today's game was his 20th-birthday gift. My treat.

Yet, it felt too small. Too trivial. Too minute a gesture for such a year.

"Let's blow this joint," he had whispered to me eight months before, as he lay in a steel hospital bed waiting for the nurse to wheel him to the operating room. My disoriented mind immediately assumed he was serious, and I began running through past MacGuyver episodes for inspiration. He covered up a nervous laugh.

"What I wouldn't give to be sitting in the bleachers watching the Tigers right now," he said under his breath.

I paused, rationally grateful that he was not serious (I was not adept with explosives), but desperately wishing he had been.

"In the bleachers," I replied, "with the paper dress or without?"

We started laughing like two kids in a giggling fit in the middle of Mass. We tried to stifle our chuckles, remembering the severity of the moment. How could we not? Severity was everywhere in that sterile room.

He came out nine hours later, leaving behind a fourth of his pelvic bone, and, we hoped, all of the cancer. The next day I could not release the thin hand that met mine through the bars of a bed on the intensive care floor.

"I'll take you to a game this summer, and I'll even memorize the line-up," I whispered.

He smiled half a smile through a web of IVs. "I'd have to see it to believe it."

So in we went that sunny day, through the familiar gate still covered with scuffed-up white paint, still grimy with the touch of a thousand hands. We wandered through the tunnels of chain link fences. We found our seats, the same creaking chairs with orange metal rungs that dug into your spine. Our sneakers stuck to the floor, to a gummy combination of Bud Light, Coke, and Cracker Jacks. The smell of steaming hotdogs, oily popcorn, and sweaty fat men permeated our senses. I felt like a queen with the king of baseball at my side.

I bought a program and kept score with my newly sharpened Tiger pencil. Jay admired the effort, though the results were less than stellar. My X's were in the wrong boxes. My K's were not backwards. Players' names were crossed out and scratched back in. Holes spotted the paper where I'd tried to erase with an overzealous arm. Jay looked it over.

"They let you into college?" he asked. "I may have to call that school out East. . . ."

The Tigers were on fire that day. One homer. One triple. Two doubles. Our opening pitcher had nine strike-outs. Our seats were right behind home plate. Box seats. You could hear the batters swear as the ball breezed by their bats. I wanted to buy a "puffy hand" with a Tiger roaring from the palm to the fingers. Jay rolled his eyes. I resigned myself to another pretzel.

That day we even caught a glimpse of Ernie Harwell, the voice of the Tiger's that had guided us through the games of our childhood. He came out of the press box during the seventh inning stretch, looking more like a professor in his tweed jacket and furry mess of white hair than a baseball fanatic. We waved to him. "You're the man, Ernie!" Jay shouted. The crowd around us turned to see the legend, and the whole section began cheering like teenagers at a rock concert. Ernie laughed, waved back, and then waddled into the press box. We both flopped into our seats with contented grins.

How far we'd come.

They're tearing down Tiger Stadium.

A neon park with luxury boxes and cushioned seats will take its place. A row of bulging pinstriped men made their most sincere promise to a clutter of microphones--it will be ready for opening day 2000. A glowing sign will arch across the main gate and will shine with the words "Comerica Park."

Jay and I won't be there on opening day. Jay died the following summer of cancer. Official cause: Ewing's sarcoma. That June afternoon was the last we spent together in Tiger Stadium.

On a gray day this past September, I was a 12-hour drive away in Boston. I had come home from work, kicked off my shoes, and absentmindedly flicked on the TV. As I sank into my couch and rummaged through the mail, a nameless newsman's words stopped me in my tracks.

"So this is it. The end of the last ball game ever to be played in Tiger Stadium. . . ."

The camera panned across the rows of empty orange seats. The sticky concrete steps were now mangled, whole blocks had been chunked off by zealous fans. The infamous green pillars were frozen in place. The smiling newsman said they would auction off the seats.

"It certainly is a sad sight," he continued. "This park is not the place it used to be. No one can argue that its time has come and gone, but it is certainly hard to say goodbye to a legend."

The grounds crew behind him rolled the tarp away from the field one last time and kicked it behind the dugout. The newsman smiled. I sat in my living room with the unopened mail on my lap until the sun set and darkness filled the small room.