Dale Jacobs - 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer

Dale: Its Opening Day for the Tigers, and were at Motor City Brewing on Canfield, sitting at the top of the oval-shaped bar, across from the television mounted over the taps and a bumper sticker that reads Cass Corridor: The Heart of Detroit. We had not planned to be in Detroit for Opening Day, but yesterdays scheduled home opener was washed out, the casualty of trying to play baseball in Michigan in March.

Like every other bar in Detroit today, the place is packed and noisy. It doesnt matter that the Tigers traded away Justin Verlander, JD Martinez, Justin Upton, and Ian Kinsler. It doesnt matter that the Tigers are at the beginning of a massive rebuild. It doesnt even matter that the Tigers are likely to lose many more games this season than they win. Its the Home Opener for the Tigers and that means, despite all meteorological signs of the past few days, that spring is coming to Detroit. What matters on this day is not the quality of the team, but the fact of baseball itself.

Heidi: This year Opening Day snuck up on me and I find the sudden appearance of baseball in this still-cold weather jarring. Even those filling this Cass Corridor bar, donning Detroit Tigers caps, t-shirts, and jerseys in celebration of Opening Day, seem indifferent to the actual game on TVs scattered around the room. I see Jordan Zimmerman on the mound, blowing on his hands to keep them warm between pitches. While I recognize Zimmerman, there are many Detroit players whose names Ive never written in my scorecard. In years past, the players have been my main connection to the game. Not knowing most of their names feels indicative of my current relationship with baseball.

Early in our season ticket days, the Tigers had a Whos Your Tiger? theme, and I unabashedly answered Curtis Granderson. I know it sounds both trite and hyperbolic, but I cried real tears of grief in December 2009 when the Tigers traded Curtis to, of all teams, the Yankees. It wasnt just that I lost my favourite player, I lost something bigger: Curtis was my connection to baseball. It was from watching Curtis that I learned what the game could mean to me and the space baseball could and would occupy in my life. I wondered then if my love for baseball could survive not having Curtis step up to the plate for the Tigers 162 games a year.

I take a drink of my beer, glance up at the TV. The Tigers just loaded the bases with no outs in the first. Maybe this team wont be as bad as everyone predicts. But Ivan Nova, the Pirates pitcher, settles down, getting three quick outs, including strikeouts of both Nick Castellanos and James McCann on weak swings on sliders away. It might be a long year for the Tigers after all.

And here I am watching it all unfold on a TV screen, at a bar less than two miles from Comericaa ballpark where Heidi and I watched so much baseball since coming to work at the University of Windsor in 2000, the same year the Tigers moved from Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park. In those years, the Tigers were woven thoroughly into the fabric of our lives, from days of having whole sections to ourselves in the 119-loss 2003 season to Magglio Ordezs walk-off home run that sent the Tigers to the World Series in 2006 to the next ten years of partial season tickets that saw us at the park for every Sunday home game. Though we had skipped quite a few Home Openers over the years, preferring to forego the rowdiness for the calm of the first Sunday, wed never been in Detroit on that day and not been at the game. Its our second year without season tickets, but it still feels very strange to be drinking a beer in Detroit on this particular day, getting ready to go to a baseball game that isnt the Tigers.

Until recently, I used to look forward to two things arriving in my mailbox in late January. One, the Veseys Seeds spring bulb catalogue, which miraculously comes every year on the day when I have the least faith it will ever get warm again. And two, the Tigers season-ticket renewal package. Both reminded me that the grey-dark days of winter were finite, and, while I could see no outward signs, spring, sunshine, and green were on their way.

This year, I clung to the Veseys catalogue but quickly recycled the envelope of promotional materials the Tigers sent to tempt us back into season tickets. I distinctly remember the dark January night when, hauling our recycling to the curb, I saw the Tigers envelope in the bin and placed my box of cans and bottles on top so it wouldnt blow away in the snowy gusts. Shuffling back to my warm house, I mourned both the absence of summer but also the self who sent the Tigers season ticket renewal back the day it arrived.

I recall sitting on the corner of my bed in January 2013, looking out my window at a grey day, phone on my ear, patiently waiting to talk with a Tigers ticket representative about switching our twenty-seven games to a smaller package because wed be travelling a lot that spring. While I was on hold, they replayed Dan Dickersons play-by-play highlights of seasons past. After hearing the replay of Ordezs 2006 walk-off home run, the Tigers answered. How can I help you? and without missing a beat I said, Id like to renew our regular package if I could please. After reliving that home run, I knew wed make that twenty-seven-game package work. I couldnt imagine a spring without baseball and spending every Sunday home game with my Tigers.

In 2015, I became part of a historical research team documenting the 1934 Chatham Coloured All-Starsthe first Black team to play in the Ontario Baseball Amateur Association (OBAA) league and the first Black team to win the OBAA Championship. In 2016, I spent most of my summer days scrolling through microfilmed newspapers to recreate the All-Stars 1934 season through box scores and game recaps and my weekends and evenings watching the Tigers.

By July of that year, Dale and I started dragging on Sunday mornings, reluctantly assembling our ball caps, water bottles, and sunscreen. By August, as we waited in line for the border agent to let us into the US, one of us said something neither of us had ever said before: I sort of wish we werent going to a game today, and the other agreed. What had happened to us and baseball? Maybe wed feel differently in the spring. But we didnt. In February 2017, we didnt renew our tickets. I thought I was through with baseball.

Though we occasionally attended a local mens league game in Woodslee, Ontario or a Mud Hens game in Toledo, Ohio, since moving to Windsor baseball had, for us, really become Major League Baseball. More specifically, baseball had become synonymous with the Tigers. Without tickets in the 2017 season, I found myself at a loss, wondering where baseball fit into my life.