Baseball

I have sort of a love/hate relationship with baseball, and its little cousin softball. The love part is the Tigers. The hate part is that baseball is the only sport that I've ever given the old college try and was just never any good at. It's even harder than golf.

I had some noteworthy successes with organized basketball, football and tennis in my school years, and have always been a slightly above average bowler. With the addition of my new big-honkin' driver my golf game is even coming around. But aside from being able to hold my own in a backyard game of catch, my baseball skills are abysmal. Ground balls scare the life out of me, any fly ball over 20 feet high will likely land at my feet, my throwing arm is wimpy, and for me the thought of standing in a batter's box waiting for someone to throw a small, dense object as hard as they can at a target a few feet from my head makes no sense at all.

Actually, I'm not even that good. My only real baseball experience was trying out for Little League, after which a well-meaning parent-coach suggested I try softball where the ball is twice as big and the pitcher has to throw underhand. Now true, top-of-the line fast pitch softball is as or even more difficult than almost any form of baseball other than college or pro. But that's not where I'm going. I'm talking slow pitch.

After failing to distinguish myself while playing on intramural slow pitch teams in college and in the Army, I was relegated in my adult life to the lowest form of the sport - blooperball - whose only similarity to baseball is that there are three bases and something that serves as home plate but looks much more like the flip side of a car mat. And I was even mediocre at that despite the fact that the ball is nearly the size of a cantaloupe. My lifetime batting average in the men's blooperball league I played in during my 20s was about .300 - impressive until you realize that most blooperball players hit about .800. Pathetic.

But enough of the dark side, which is immensely overshadowed by the upside - the Tigers. I have been a Tigers fan all my life. As a kid I remember listening from my bedroom window in Bay City as the play by play of Tigers games wafted through my window from the back porch next door, where the neighbors often listened to the radio broadcasts and played cards. Later when I received my first transistor radio, its most important job was bringing me AM 790, the local Tigers affiliate.

Now we have digital hi-def cable, XM radio, pod-casts, Game Day, Orb or Slingbox (Internet services that can send your home cable signal anywhere) and MLB.com. My offspring in Austin and Hoboken as well as my parents in Florida can and do follow the Tigers' every move with ease. But despite the geometric improvements in technology, the essential experience remains the same - waiting for and learning what happens on the next pitch.

The guessing game between the pitcher and the batter is the crux of baseball. This happens with each pitch (almost three hundred times in a typical game) and in my opinion offers more excitement and demands more of the serious fan than any other sport. When is the batter likely to swing based on his history? What pitches are working for the pitcher tonight and how is his control? What's the ball and strike count on the batter?  Where is the pitcher in his total pitch count? Will the runners be moving? Is the defense positioned correctly for the situation? All these questions are asked and answered for every pitch, decisions are made, and the pitcher goes into his wind-up or into the stretch if there are runners on base.  Will it be a 95 mile an hour fast ball on the outside corner (virtually unhittable), a nasty slider in the dirt that induces a swing that misses by a foot, or a 75 mile an hour hanging curve in the middle of the plate that ends up in the left-field bleachers.  For Tigers fans, picture Jose Valverde in the bottom of the ninth with a two-run lead, going into his goofy motion with runners at second and third and a 3-2 count on the batter (sound familar?)  I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

Then there is the righty-lefty thing. Conventional wisdom is that right-handed batters do better against left-handed pitchers, and vice versa, because they can see the in-coming pitch better and make better swings. And there is a vast body of statistical information (thank the advent of the personal computer) to support the theory. This leads to periodic fits of player substitutions and counter-substitutions in critical game situations that drive fans nuts. However, it also means that among major spectator sports, baseball is one of if not the most dependent on situational analysis and strategy, which for the knowledgeable fan can be mesmerizing.

But the beauty of the game is that it can also be enjoyed casually, just enjoying (or lamenting over) the results and ignoring all this thinking and plotting among the players. And the fact that there are so many games in a season (162) means that the value of each individual game is less than in any other team sport. Indeed, even a successful team can lose over 70 times in a season. So you can have a good time taking in a baseball game even if your team loses, knowing that they can make it up tomorrow. This may be a bit of sports heresy, but being able to enjoy the game regardless of outcome has a value. And it's easiest to do in baseball.

Of course all the warm and fuzzy stuff goes out the window if you make the playoffs. The post-season comes with all the angst of the Super Bowl or the Final Four, as the Tigers learned once again this week. The agony of blowing a two-run lead in the bottom of the ninth on Wednesday - and failing to put the Athletics away - was replaced with the ecstasy on Thursday night of Justin Verlander's masterful performance and the win that earned the Tigers a berth in the AL Championship Series. But no one who has followed the Tigers this year was at all surprised by these happenings, as this is how the entire 2012 season has gone.  Bums one day, heroes the next.

Despite the current ups and downs, my affection for the Tigers is secure as it is rooted in a lifetime of wonderful experiences. I remember my first trip to old Briggs Stadium (later known as Tiger Stadium) as part of a church youth group outing circa 1958. Later there were many Tigers trips with my school and work friends, often to take in double-headers (an extinct event these days - two games purposely scheduled and played back-to-back on the same day with about a 20 minute break in between, all offered for the price of one ticket).

After moving to the Detroit area in 1980 a trip to the ball park became a regular thing, many times with business associates from around the country who were in Detroit for training or meetings. Some of my fondest memories of Tiger Stadium were games with big-time baseball fans from New York, Cincinnati or Philadelphia, all huge baseball towns. Though our loyalties varied, a mutual appreciation of baseball added a rich texture to my personal as well as professional relationships with these individuals.

On one memorable occasion during the last season the Tigers played at Tiger Stadium, two of our party were the proud recipients of foul balls - from the same at bat. The first was hit directly into the glove of a devoted fan (Joe - you know who you are) who had announced not five minutes earlier that despite his many trips to Tiger Stadium he (then in his mid-40s) had never caught a foul ball. I swear - he barely moved his glove. And I can still see the ear-to-ear grin on his face. Truth is stranger than fiction.

A few pitches later another foul ball screamed over our heads (our seats were directly behind home plate in the upper deck), ricocheted off the seats and rolled down the cement steps where a friend from Brooklyn (another Joe) retrieved it and awarded it to my younger daughter, Cathy. Of course, as I was scoring the game, I noted both incidents in the margin and kept that score sheet on my office wall for many years. Can't tell you how many times I have told this story, complete with the score sheet as a visual aid. Upon our departure from our 24th floor office suite in the McNamara Building a few years ago I presented the score sheet to the first Joe as a keepsake. My guess is that Joe has since told this story himself a few more times.

Finally, no discussion of Burk family baseball history would be complete without at least a brief mention of the 1984 season. That was the year I attended the most games and from which I have many memories. A good friend of mine had a connection with a Tiger Stadium employee. Before the season started, I asked this friend of a friend to get the best seats he could for 11 different games, including opening day and the last game of the season. For some games I bought two tickets, but for most I asked for four. And as history has recorded, my advance purchase was a brilliant stroke of luck.

The Tigers led the league wire-to-wire in 1984, winning nine of their first 10 games, 18 of their first 20 and 35 of their first 40.  They went on to win 104 games and the World Series. The Burk family saw a lot of it in person. I remember one double-header with my parents (both avid baseball fans - my father always, my mother since Mark "The Bird" Fidrych hit the scene in 1976) where we sat about five rows back in the lower deck right behind home plate. As my mother was a huge Lance Parish fan (the Tigers catcher), this was a good time.  There was another game where we sat two rows back from the Tigers bull pen (along the third-base line in those days) and my son Ted ended up with a foul ball fielded by Randy O'Neal, a reliever who was warming up at the time. Of the 11 games I attended that year, the Tigers won eight. What a ride.

These days the tradition has continued for our whole family. Nancy and I have been to Comerica Park a few times this year to see the Tigers and once to Toledo to see the Mudhens, a Tigers farm team. I also made it to a Brewers game during my last business trip to Milwaukee (where I personally thanked the fans for sending Prince Fielder to the Tigers). In my own spaces I almost always have the game on the radio or TV, whether at home, at the cottage, on the beach or in the car - XM radio rocks.

My parents are also everyday baseball fans. My dad watches the Rays on local TV in Florida - he's become a Rays fan in recent years - and my mother catches the Tigers on a laptop web link a few feet away. Intense. And my kids in other parts of the country catch as many games as they can through the Internet or their cable packages. Whenever one of us is at a ball park we routinely text pictures of the field to each other, bragging about how much fun we're having (this has been known to happen simultaneously from multiple ball parks). The bottom line is that baseball, and especially the Tigers, remains a great source of Burk family fun.

Tonight as I complete this post, the Yankees have just defeated the Orioles. So it's off to New York for the Tigers and another series with the Yankees. We've beaten them the last two times we've met them in the playoffs, and we're looking for the hat trick.

So, GO TIGERS! And I'll see you at the ball park.