Growing Up Lucky

Well, the Cubs season has imploded more explosively than Tiger Stadium will in a redevelopment plan. Speaking of redevelopment plans...



Nah, I don’t wanna go there. I’d rather reminisce a bit. After all, I’m going to miss Tiger Stadium. I already do.



One of my father’s favorite stories from recent years came at a Tiger game with one of his fellow high school teachers, who was also the baseball coach, and the other teacher’s young son.

You have to understand first that my father is a creature of habit, especially with parking. Once he finds a place to park, he will continue to park there for eternity if possible. He parked at the same spot at the high school every single morning. He’s parked at the same spot for church for years. He’s parked within 2 or 3 spots of each other at Detroit Pistons games for probably going on 80 games or so, with few exceptions. At Comiskey, he would always park on a certain street by IIT and we’d walk over. Up north, I can remember going to Wrigley, in the days before increased zoning. He would drive up Clark and take a left on Roscoe to look for a spot... just about every time.



Same thing for Tiger Stadium. He found out about a spot across the highway bridge, on a dead-end residential & warehouse street where the stadium vendors and so forth all parked. For free, of course. You really had to know it was there to find it. If you looked around, there was plenty of Detroit dilapidation, that unique sort of decay found in a city built to withstand powerful machines and harsh winters. That dilapidation was why the other teacher’s son asked his father if the car would be safe. “If Mr. Boehm parks here, it must be OK,” he answered. And of course, it always was. I’ll probably be able to remember parking on that street and walking across the bridge to Tiger Stadium those couple dozen or so times for the rest of my life.



I realize -- now -- how lucky I was to grow up going to ballgames. I enjoyed it then, but for all I knew plenty of kids got to grow up immersed in baseball. Our family vacations were planned to accommodate the home schedule at ballparks my father hadn’t been to yet. I think he’s at 45 or 46 now, and has been to all currently in use but 4: Safeco in Seattle, (new) Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and this summer we’ll hit the two in Texas: Ameriquest Field in Arlington and Minute Maid Park in Houston. He even took my mother to Puerto Rico when the Expos were playing at Hiram Bithorn.



(Not that my mother even really likes baseball; it’s more owing to her that I studied literature, and have been to some fine theater productions all over the country and even abroad. Of course, she’s probably been to more baseball stadiums than all but the hardest core fans, and couldn’t care less. Life is funny like that, it seems to me.)



Family Vacations. I can remember a HOT afternoon in Kansas City, quite possibly the hottest ballgame one could attend, with the air radiating in waves up from the Astroturf. I remember the silver bleachers in Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. I remember the night -- long before cellphones -- when my mother and sister sat in the wrong seats at Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, being certain that we must have sat in the wrong seats. The worst part? Their accidental seats were a whole lot better than ours. I remember the night in Philadelphia, walking around Veteran’s Stadium for an hour trying to find the van because the “landmark” ramp my father parked near was repeated 6 or 8 times around the stadium.



I don’t remember Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Apparently, on the backswing of that vacation, I was young enough to decide to stay at the hotel, swim, and call it an early night. My father and brother should have dragged me; although, I’m pretty certain I would have been rather stubborn and, shall we say, difficult. I was not as cantankerous as my older brother was, according to family history, but I had my moments.



I remember Fireworks Nights at Comiskey, and bat days at Wrigley. Not that they could ever get away with giving away full wooden bats these days. Calamity would surely ensue. Say what you want, but those really were more innocent times.



And I was lucky enough to enjoy them more than any kid has a right.



Then there was last year, when I decided to quit my job and move to Texas, leaving myself several months off to write. Meanwhile, my father retired after 42 years of being a high school teacher, principal and guidance counselor at schools in South Chicago, Minneapolis, and then Saginaw, Michigan. He planned a trip, whereby he and I went to 9 games in 7 cities in 10 days. I chronicled it for Agony & Ivy: Ten Nights in September.



Thanks again, Dad, for everything. I can't wait for the games in July. Happy Father’s Day.