Living with my grandparents was interesting. They had a schedule that they kept, with very little variation. My grandpa was up and out of the house early in the morning. He almost always got up around 5 AM, and went down to the restaurant for coffee and a roll. Notice that I wrote, “the restaurant.” There was basically one in Mesick besides the one in the hotel, and at that time, it was called Bob & Carol’s. In comparison, there were two small grocery stores, two bars, two churches, a hardware store, a bank, a post office, and a phone company. There was a rescue squad, but no real fire department, and no police presence. It was (and is) a small town. How small? My grandparents’ phone number was 885-1148. I only had to remember the last three digits, 148, because every phone number in Mesick began with 885-1. There were fewer than 1,000 phones…and people. We didn’t have cable TV, and since Mesick was in a valley cut by the Manistee River, line-of-sight signals tended to bounce right over us. We had access to a CBS TV station, and NBC station, and an ABC station that came in fuzzy at night and cleared up as the night progressed, because the UHF (ultra-high frequency) signal would bounce off the sides of the valley.
Keep in mind that we didn’t have any way to record video back then. No DVR, VCR, not even BetaMax. You watched your shows when they were on, and there were reruns all summer. But that was all right, because the night time was for watching the Detroit Tigers. Both my grandparents loved the Detroit Tigers. My grandma used to describe listening to the Tigers on the radio with her father in the 1930s. They would read the box scores in the newspaper if they were playing too far away to hear them play on the radio. Being a Tigers fan was one thing that my stepfather Steve and I had in common. It was probably the only thing we had in common. I used to be allowed to stay up as late as the Tigers played in the summer. I remember one game going until 2 AM when I was between third and fourth grade. It was made more memorable by seeing the Northern Lights, even though we lived in the southern part of the lower peninsula. During the school year, I listened to them on my clock radio, letting the tones of Ernie Harwell, the Tigers’ radio announcer, put me to sleep.
I had followed the Tigers for as long as I could remember. I know, I begged to go when Mom and Steve got tickets to go to an actual game at Tiger Stadium. I dreamed of going to Tiger Stadium. I didn’t get to go, but they did bring me home an authentic Detroit Tigers cap, with the Olde English D on the front. I wore that thing every single day from fourth grade until 5th grade, when a 6th grade bully named Brent Vallier took it from me on the school bus and tore the bill away before throwing it out the bus window. I was miserable. They had also brought back a yearbook, which I studied over and over again, reading about some of my favorite players, like Bill Freehan, Al Kaline, Aurelio Rodriguez, Mickey Lolich, Eddie Brinkman, John Hiller, and Mickey Stanley. It was hard to choose an absolute favorite, although Bill Freehan was the catcher and that’s where I had wanted to play.
There was almost a whole new roster by 1977, and there were some new players to emulate. Since I had played first base for the summer in Tustin, the new Tigers first baseman, Jason Thompson, became my new favorite. I really wanted to see Mark “the Bird” Fidrych pitch again. He had been the 1976 Rookie of the Year, going 19-9 for the Tigers, and people saw him as the next great pitcher of our time. Unfortunately, he hurt his knee in spring training and by the time July came around, he had a case of “dead arm” and was never the same pitcher again. But that didn’t deter me from loving these mediocre Tigers. I knew every name, every uniform number.
Since the Tigers were in the American League, I only got to see them play against other American League teams. Unless you were watching the World Series, the American League never played the National League. My only chance to see other teams during the regular season was on Saturday, when NBC would broadcast This Week In Baseball, followed by the Game of the Week. That’s the only way I ever got to see Willie Mays or Pete Rose play on TV until the playoffs.
I still remember arguing with my grandfather over baseball, when a runner advancing from first base took out a second baseman trying to turn a double play. My grandpa yelled, “That’s dirty pool!” so I got to learn some new phrases, that’s for sure. He was also fond of other terminology that I will not repeat here, referring to black players. He was not a tolerant man.
My dad didn’t care about the Tigers at all. He had gone to Detroit to see a game in 1961 and got his pocket picked, losing his wallet. From that moment on, he was not a fan of the team. I thought that was short-sighted, but I kept quiet. I didn’t want to disagree with him.
I was also a Detroit Lions fan back then, but football was really not that big a deal, only playing on Sundays with the exception of Thanksgiving Day, which was a Lions tradition. I had never seen a Pistons or Red Wings game, so I had no idea about the NBA or NHL. For me, it was all about the Tigers.
