My love for the city of Detroit is deeply intertwined with my fandom of Tigers baseball. There couldn’t be one without the other. Fifteen years ago, I made a trip to Detroit to take my brother to a Tigers game for his birthday, and found myself enthralled with the spirit of the city, the team, and a player named Miguel Cabrera. As I mentioned in this past month’s musing, when I traveled to Detroit that day, I was not a Tigers fan. But I had been one before.
My family is from Northwest Ohio, and I spent most of my childhood in Toledo, home of the Mud Hens, the AAA minor league affiliate to the Detroit Tigers. My father and his family were Tigers fans, so I grew up in Tigers baseball. The Tigers won the 1984 World Series when I was 7 months old. I had newspaper clippings of Sparky Anderson on my walls and a Cecil Fielder baseball card on my dresser. Every Sunday during baseball season, I would check my grandparents’ copy of the Toledo Blade sports page for the latest scores and standings (after reading the comics and Peach section, of course).
In the mid-90s though my family left Toledo. In these days before the internet and social media, it was hard to follow a baseball team 200+ miles north, especially one that wasn’t that great. It didn’t mean baseball wasn’t a part of my life though. As a family, we would go to a Reds game, Columbus Clippers games, and even a Tigers game in one of the first few seasons at Comerica Park. It wouldn’t be until I spent a summer in Washington, DC, during the inaugural season of the Washington Nationals that I would really call myself a baseball fan again.
As I bounced from DC and Columbus, so did my baseball fandom. By this time, my father had left our family, and the thought of being a Tigers fan like him was unappealing. I cheered for the Nationals and Cleveland (again, Tigers fans- I’m so sorry). While I really did want to go to Jacob’s Field, I was also trying on being a Cleveland fan when I convinced my brother to go to a game with me. My reasoning was I’m from Ohio, so maybe my sports teams should be too. My brother though was having none of it. He was (and still is) a Tigers fan. He never wavered. He agreed to travel to Cleveland with me for a game, but only when they played the Tigers. AND as part of this agreement, I would have to take him to a Tigers game in Detroit.
That fateful June day changed everything. Not only did I feel at home in the city of Detroit, I felt at home behind the Tigers dugout on the 3rd base side, sitting in the warm sun, listening to cheers for the team and a player named Miguel Cabrera.
I was intrigued by the “Let’s go Miggy!” cheers. Who was Miggy? I vividly remember one lady in particular wearing a Miguel Cabrera jersey standing up to cheer for him when he came up to bat. I was in awe. I wanted that level of fandom in my life! I wanted to wear a team jersey, cheer for a player, and be comfortable standing up to cheer in a crowd! Soon I would find myself doing all three.
By the time we went to the Tigers game in 2010, social media was alive and well. I could now follow the Tigers without the Toledo Blade, sports TV, or a simple Google search. I could get live online updates during games. I could even stream games online- I started first with streaming the radio broadcast and then MLBtv where I could actually watch out of market games all summer. If you remember Tigers baseball during this time, they were doing quite well. They even made it to the World Series in 2012! So it was an exciting time to recommit myself as a Detroit Tigers fan.
I still had some apprehensions though with this reconnection to something that was shared between my father and me. But then my mom told me that her grandpa, my great grandpa, used to listen to Tigers games on the radio, just like I found myself doing at that time. It was a new connection to someone who I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with, but made a big impression on my childhood.
My great grandpa passed away when I was 9. From those short years, I remember high fives as greetings, playing “Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater” on the piano for him, and him keeping a close eye on my great grandma as she would play card games with me, my brother, and cousins (I guess she liked to cheat at card games to win, which still makes me chuckle).
Once this connection to my great grandpa was established, I honestly never questioned if I should be a Tigers fan again. It has become a part of who I am over the last 15 years. I traveled to Detroit for games whenever I could. I incorporated Tigers colors into my wardrobe, wearing different blue and orange combinations of clothing during baseball season. I wore player’s jersey shirts out and about and to games. My favorite hat for nature walks was (and still is) the classic Olde English D ball cap. I printed off pictures of my favorite players to hang up on my work desks, an ode to those Sparky Anderson newspaper clippings. I even decided to dedicate years of travel to go on “baseball adventures” and see the Tigers play in every MLB stadium (I am currently halfway there).
It is amazing to see how my journey as a baseball and Tigers fan has played out. It is even more incredible to think what my life would be like if my brother and I never went on that June 2010 trip to Detroit. I may not be a Tigers fan. I may not have fallen in love with the city of Detroit. I may not own a house and live in this great city!
There is a tweet by actor Jeff Daniels that I continue to think about ever since he first posted it many years ago:
15 years after that June game, almost 41 years since the last World Series win, I can safely say the same- whatever happens, when this is all over, I will always be a Tigers fan.
