Detroit Tigression

I’m a lousy baseball fan, so bad, in fact, that nowadays I’d describe most of
the regular season as excruciatingly boring. Still, I am feeling some emotional
pull (an intensification of home or childhood or both) from the Tigers’
domination of the Yankess and A’s, their impending trip to this year’s World
Series. It sends me right back to 1984, the late-summer my maternal grandmother
died, Survivor’s "Eye of the Tiger" thematizing the successes of Gibson,
Parrish, Trammell, Chet Lemon, Morris, Berenguer, and
the
rest
. I was 10, and so invested in MLB that I listened to many games on the
radio. Sheesh.

I wore a Tigers hat almost every single day in those days. All the adults
fretted: "You’ll ef up your hair for good!" One unforgettable day on the school
bus, a couple of bullies even tested my will when they swiped my beloved cap and
tossed it out the window. Later my mom drove me to the site so I could recover
the coveted hat from the weedy ditch where it landed–in front of the most
putrid farm along

Winn Road
. And now for an astonishing fact: I still have the hat. I
hadn’t given it a thought in years, but just remembered that it was stuffed in
the one bin of old crapola (a tape drive, 45s) down in the basement. The hat
doesn’t fit me any more (which means I should probably part with it). However,
if it did fit, I’d happily put it on to more heartily celebrate the
Tigers’ return to the WS
.

Think I was making it up?

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