Baseball and memories

 

Spring 1937, DAN SANBORN/Lakeland Public Library

I began my love affair with baseball after my Grandfather took me to see a Spring Training game in Lakeland. The Detroit Tigers have been coming to Lakeland in the spring for 85 years. Yep, you read that correctly; 85 years. 

Lakeland continued to support the Detroit Tigers with a farm team, the Lakeland Tigers who are part of the Florida State League. When I was a teenager, it was a cheap and fun way to spend a summer evening, sitting at the ball park and cheering on the Tigers. 

My senior year in high school, 1974-75 found me doing a lot of things with a friend who also loved baseball. We both had cars and would meet at Joker Marchand Stadium on the north side of Lakeland, grab us a beer and some popcorn, and settle in for a great game. I know 17 was too young to buy a beer, but things were much less stringent then and no one really cared. 

This also resulted in the meeting of the players. You cannot have young men and young women in the same spot without having them interact. I learned to play Spades and all the ins and outs of baseball that first year, along with meeting some great guys. I have photos of them, but  except Ron LeFlore, who was only around for a short time before being sent to the AAA club in Evansville, had no idea even why it was cool to know a major league player.

But oh, those other guys. They stayed and played. I was lucky enough to meet Lance Parrish and Lou Whitaker. Dave Rozema and Alan Trammel. I drank beer with Mark Fidrych in a bar they all hung out in named Zimmerman's the night he was called up to Detroit. He was so excited. I also kissed Jim Leyland at the bar the night Lakeland won the Florida State Championship. From 1974 until 1977, I met so many ball players who were always up for a game of Spades or a cold beer. In this time before cell phones, when minor league players made very little, roomed with 4 or 5 other players and loved the road trips because they made extra meal money, they could always stop by my apartment after the game and use my phone to call home, or to grab a beer from the refrigerator. 

I did not date these guys. The first player who ever asked me out was named Bryce. He never progressed past the minors but at the end of the FSL season he talked about getting back home to his girlfriend and he thought it was great that I understood there was nothing serious between us. Oh, my heart was broken but I never said a word. I just learned that I would always treat them as friends, not boyfriends. Lesson learned.

Social media has allowed many of us to connect with others and when I saw a Facebook group for the Fans of the 1984 Detroit Tigers, I joined and posted my first photo. 

To remember all the fun we used to have, I have a very old scrapbook, with clippings and photos of the 1975and 1976 summers. The photos have yellowed in many cases and many of the players reached their pinnacle with the FSL and never progressed. Lance Parrish was not one of those. The first photo I posted was of him, sitting on his couch in his apartment in Lakeland, shirtless with long hair and bell bottoms, looking sideways at my friend, Pat, who was also sitting on the couch. I believe we were going to begin a game a Spades, which we played a lot of. 

Some of the people in the group began arguing that this photo couldn't possibly be Lance Parrish. It didn't look like him. He was not buffed out from the weight room. His hair was too long and on and on. I tried to explain that I took the photo and if you had known Lance 47 years ago, you would know exactly what he looked like. 

I didn't argue; I posted 2 more photos that I had of him and called it a day. I did hear from many who wanted to know if I had balls or bats or gloves or something signed and on and on. I am not sure if they were going to offer to buy these things from me or what, but truth be told, I have none of those things. I have an old, beat up scrapbook that is filled with a ton of memories from a teenaged, baseball fan. I wouldn't trade those memories for all the signed bats in the world.