A Ballpark Visit

Podcast - A Ballpark Visit . . .

“Are the Tigers playing at home?”

As an avid baseball fan, a question I’ve asked many times during my Alumni travels preparing to visit Detroit, MI.

However, this time I found that question printed in a tattered, yellowing, newspaper clipping from the Detroit Free Press dated Saturday, September 25, 1948, carefully tucked away in a scrapbook.

The ball-club was and two young boys realized a dream, I can only imagine what that was like . . .

Let me get you up to speed. While going through a box of old files from Lori’s father I came across an article titled Youth’s First City Visit.

A piece co-authored by 15-year-old Gerald (Jerry) Davies from the farming community of Marlette, Michigan about his experiences visiting Detroit.

The photo journal and article was a promotion sponsored by The Detroit Free Press as a student exchange.

Gerald Davies from Marlette MI would meet his namesake Jerry Davies from Detroit, together they would visit and work on the Davies family farm, take a trip to the city, and attend a big-league ball game.

Their weekend highlight was The Corner, the nickname for the intersection of Michigan and Trumbull Avenue, Briggs Stadium, (later re-named Tiger Stadium 1961).

During their Ballpark visit, the two young boys were the VIP guests that day, they met Tigers manager Steve O’Neil and chatted with star players from the 1948 Tigers.

The photo caption read, "Gerald was particularly impressed with outfielder Hoot Evers," (Walter Arthur Evers) who batted .314 in 1948.

Reading through that tattered article 70 years later, I can only speculate what game they saw.

Scanning the Baseball Almanac, I'd like to think it was the 1948 pennant-winning Cleveland Indians. A ball-club powered with such greats as Bob Feller, Lou Boudreau, and Larry Doby. The Indians whipped the Tigers 9-3. I'm going to dig deeper in that box, maybe I'll find the ticket stub? That would be pretty cool.

Be it nostalgia, the love of the game, or simply the longing to recreate the past, to this day, I’m able to follow the Detroit Tigers, via my iPhone and MLB’s At Bat app.

Obviously not yet, the 2021 Baseball season won’t start until April 1st.

It's as if there’s a connection somehow.

Hmm, maybe there is . . .

This is Patrick Ball, thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

Comments

Anonymous said…

I knew a Marlette...

January 15, 2021 at 11:35 AM

When Fear Becomes the Default

In this special episode, When Fear Becomes the Default. Early Sunday morning, I was cycling past a small veterans’ pocket park in San Marcos. The air was still, the streets nearly empty. On one corner stood a young woman, alone, holding a hand-painted sign that read: “Be ANGRY. ICE agents are murdering people.” I pedaled past, but the words stayed with me. I knew the context—the footage and headlines from Minneapolis the day before, already ricocheting through the country and hardening opinions. Even in the quiet of the ride, the noise followed. Two miles later, I stopped at a red light. A black car with dark windows pulled up inches from my bike. My heart jumped. My first instinct wasn’t neighbor —it was threat . I found myself bracing, scanning, and wondering if the person inside was angry, armed, or looking for trouble. Then the door opened. A well-dressed young woman stepped out, walked to the trunk, and pulled out a sign that read “Open House.” She turned, smiled brightly, and sa...

The Language of Home: Building a Sanctuary

This episode is for anyone trying to find their footing in a new place—whether it’s a new city, a new job, or a new country. The light in Florence, Italy, has a way of making everything feel like a Renaissance painting—the golden hue on the stone, the steady rhythm of the Arno River, and the feeling that you are walking through a history much larger than yourself. I was there to give a presentation to a class of Gemology students. I was prepared to discuss color grading and refractive indices, but not to be outed as a language tutor . Feeling very much like a guest in a storied land, a hand shot up enthusiastically. "You’re the guy on the podcasts," the young woman said, her eyes bright with recognition. "You’re the one teaching us English." I laughed nervously. If you know my flat Midwestern accent, you know the irony here. I am hardly an Oxford professor. But later, as I wandered the cobblestone streets beneath the shadow of the Duomo, the humor faded into a powe...

Sweden Called . . . They Said No.

Have you ever wondered about the Nobel Prize? Let's look at Where Genius Meets “Wait—Where’s My Medal?” Every October, the Nobel Prizes are announced, and humanity pauses to celebrate the "greatest benefit to mankind." And every year, like clockwork, a specific type of person appears online to complain—at length—that they were robbed. (Well, maybe this year more than most.) The Origin: A Legacy of Guilt The prize exists because Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor, had a crisis of conscience. Nobel held 355 patents, but he was most famous for inventing dynamite. When a French newspaper mistakenly published his obituary, calling him the " Merchant of Death, " he decided to buy a better legacy. In his 1895 will, he left the bulk of his massive fortune to establish five prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace). Because he was Swedish, he entrusted the selection to Swedish institutions, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The only outlier...

Practiced Hands: The 50-Year Warranty

What Doc Burch Taught Me About Staying Active. We talk a lot about "life hacks" these days, but most of them don’t have a very long shelf life. Usually, they’re forgotten by the next app update. But back in 1972, I received a piece of advice that came with a 50-year warranty. It’s the reason I’m still on my bike today, still chasing a golf ball around Carlsbad, and still—mostly—in one piece. The Kick That Changed Everything It started with a literal kick in the pants. A kid at school in Cuba, Illinois, was joking around and caught me just right. By the next morning, my lower back was screaming. My mom didn’t reach for the Tylenol; she reached for her car keys. "Let’s go see Doc Burch," she said. "He’ll fix you right up." Harry E. Burch, D.C., was a fixture in Lewistown. He’d graduated from Palmer College in ’59 and had been our family’s go-to for years. He was a man of practiced hands and steady eyes. After a quick exam and an X-ray, the mood in the room s...

On The Fly

Search This Blog