Take me out to the ballgame, take me out with the crowd

I made my last visit three nights ago, to see the double-decked washtub one last time. I went to plenty of games this year, but always with the mentality that I could go once more, to actually say goodbye.

So my dad and I got bleacher tickets and went downtown late Saturday afternoon. I thought of going myself, or with friends, but no. Father and son at the ballpark.

We sat in the front row, dead center, behind the wire fence keeping anyone having too much to drink in the stands. I watched the game through diamonds of intersecting wire links. It was the deepest centerfield all right; the center fielders stood at

David Wallace

least 100 feet closer to home plate throughout the game.

Listening to the crowd, most voices spoke of Tiger Stadium memories: first games with fathers, grandfathers or uncles. Reminiscences of school trips and days for safeties. I asked my dad about his memories of the park, and he obliged. For some reason, I never asked him about his first visit to Tiger Stadium until our last. The time and place weren't right.

I have plenty of good memories of the park, but my baseball memories recall Tiger Stadium in the distance, behind the neighborhood games of kids all dreaming of playing there.

When I was young, the group of kids in the neighborhood played baseball until the streetlights came on. We rarely kept track of innings; we just played until we had to stop. The streetlights signaled the end; our mothers-forces we could not control-called us in, and we had to go. The streetlights snapped reality to us, made our longing hearts come in dragging bats and gloves.

Everyday during summer, myself and the guys woke up early to play our first games in shoes whose toes turned a darker color running through the dewy morning grass. We went home only to eat, then back to the game, to a continuation or a new one.

The games made a grand spectacle of making due. Frisbees subbed for bases. Sometimes a tree or a porch filled in at third. We created the field from backyards running together. We set the homerun mark an unheard of three-and-a-half lots straightaway. It was not the roof in Tiger Stadium's rightfield. No one ever cleared it.

The games taught us a variety of baseball skills. We dropped extra base hits into flowerpots and planter boxes. We learned to play the carom off the aluminum siding. A runner on second might slide the base closer to third with no one watching, to score on a single. All underemployed strategies at the major league level.

Roofs were in play - catch the ball as it rolled off for an out. A gutter swallowing a roofshot awarded the batter a ground rule double and a time out while we found a new ball. A routine pop-up? Yell "DROP IT!" at the right moment and a kid likely would. And we argued, scrapped, accused each other of the worst cheating ever and settled all with the inarguable "do-over!"

We've played all the games now. There hasn't been a season in years. I wish I could say we had one last series before everyone split like the Florida Marlins, but no such luck. I don't remember the last game we played together. Now, new neighbors who never saw us play have no idea their houses sit on outfields instead of lots. High school, jobs, drivers licenses all turned the streetlights on, making part of our childhood come in.

These were the thoughts I carried watching that last game at Tiger Stadium. None of us ever made it to the park any other way. I was on the field once, as part of a tour group.

The crowd delighted in pleasures previously taken for granted. We did the wave a final time. I watched a 70-year-old man stand up and hold his hands high. Everyone wanted a piece of tradition. Doing our duty, we bleacher creatures heckled Carlos Beltran, the Kansas City Royals' centerfielder.

"Beltran, you're a loser!"

"Wiff stinky breff!" added an undersized fan, who would have fit well with my group a decade ago.

A younger part of me crept out as I yelled "DROP IT!" on a Karim Garcia pop-up, and it worked one last time as Beltran misplayed the ball and two runs scored.

The game ended in a rout, 11-3, and the fans rejoiced in seeing a win on their last visit. Then they didn't leave.

My dad asked me, "Why's everyone sticking around?" He was sticking around too. I heard stadium police say maybe people thought there would be fireworks.

But I knew why we remained. With last looks, fans put themselves on the field, turning double plays with friends now long gone, or hitting game-winning homers in the World Series. It was the last look at a friend, the last look at a dream. We owed it to the stadium, and the stadium owed it to us.

We emptied the stadium crunching peanut shells underfoot as hot dog wrappers blew down the ramps; walked past the souvenir stands, to the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, up Trumbull for a picture with the Cobb plaque, gazed on the famous lumberyard, over the freeway to the car in the lot, and home.

All the time, something called to the departing crowd's remaining childhood, as it was everywhere under the streetlights.

- David Wallace can be reached over

e-mail at davidmw@umich.edu.

Exile on Maynard St.

09-28-99