The Late Innings

I wanted to take my mom to one last Tigers game

- EDWARD GRINNAN

Surprisingly, one of the earliest signs of my mother’s memory problems was that she turned me from a Detroit Tigers fan into a New York Yankees fan. Please don’t boo. Hear me out.

I am—or was—a born Philadelphia Phillies fan due to the fact that my mother was a born Phillies fan. She was devoted to all the Philadelphia sports teams but none more than her beloved Phillies. She watched every game and was rarely off her feet, pacing and talking to the players (and occasionally the umpires) through the TV screen, clapping her hands and often clasping them in prayer. No shame at all in praying for your boys—Don Demeter, Richie Allen and the sainted Robin Roberts.

Yet truth to tell, devotion can be transitory. We moved to Detroit in the early ’60s. No cable yet, and certainly no internet. Just local stations for the local teams. How could Mom keep up with her Phillies? She needed a team to root for. So she fell in love with the Detroit Tigers and all the other Motor City teams…but especially the Tigs. And so, of course, did I. The team would go on later that decade to win the World Series—Mickey Lolich, Willie Horton, Al Kaline—a trophy denied the luckless Phillies since the Truman administration. I remember those evenings in early spring, when the season was just getting underway, when hope bloomed. I would do my homework at the table within earshot of the family room and the game, Mom’s commentary far more entertaining than the actual television broadcast.