My introduction to baseball

“And….Rocky Colavito is up to bat now,” I said, with all the drama I could muster as a five year old.  Rocky Colavito was on the Detroit Tigers, and he was the favorite player of my heartthrob, David H., who was all of 4 years older than me. “Rocky” and Al Kaline (a.k.a. David H.’s sister Diane) and Stormin’ Norman Cash (a.k.a. my older brother Dennis) played regularly in our back yard on Roselawn Street on the west side of Detroit.

Sometimes they let me have a turn at bat. Batting was where it was at – much more fun to bat and run than to throw and catch. Other times they referred me to the broadcasting booth at Tiger Stadium, a.k.a. our back porch, where I sat making commentaries out of the hot sun, chewing on bits of The Detroit News, and watching carefully in case Mom would come out and catch me at it.

Grandpa used to bring his little hand-held transistor radio when he would come out to our cottage or his at “the lake.” He’d keep track of the game in between visiting with everyone, occasionally letting out a yelp at a good play.  It wasn’t until I was in high school that I convinced him to take me to a game at the stadium. I’d been once before and our family had sat in the upper deck over third base and I wasn’t impressed.  I insisted that we get tickets lower down and out by first base, because it seemed to me, in all my wisdom, that there was more action at first than at third. Rocky Colavito had moved on long before and I’m not sure about Cash, but I’m pretty sure that Al Kaline  was still playing. Diane H.  would have been proud.

On the way in, I bought a program and he showed me how to keep track of the score, filling in the squares as to how each player had done during the game. But unfortunately, he never let me forget it that our seats, which had seemed such a good deal, were “sort of” behind a pole.

I’ve always gotten a kick out of some names: Al Kaline – must have a lot of energy (alkaline.) Then there’s the soap king: Armand Hammer. Last of all we have the reference to a politician’s dancing: Algorithm.