My Storied Stuff

by James Finn Garner

My friends Steve and Sharon Fiffer started a marvelous site a year ago called STORIED STUFF, where people show the various precious objects in their lives and share the story. He asked me to write one about baseball, so here are my random thoughts attached to an old autographed pill. You can find the original post and other storied stuff here.

This baseball was signed by all of the 1973 Detroit Tigers. I sprayed it with lacquer before my hands wore off the ink of all the signatures. This spherical madeleine is for:

–all the neighbor ladies (Mrs. Moran, Mrs. Galer, Mrs. Caccavo) who knew baseball and knew the players, and taught me a lot about dedication

–Father Bueche who was in charge of the altar boy ranks at church and took us down to Tiger Stadium occasionally, before being removed in scandal later

–all the men in the dark recesses of The Bengal Bar on Michigan Avenue—though I could never see you, I heard your shouts and laughs, and marveled at the tawdry pleasures of adulthood, and wondered who painted that near-psychedelic tiger on your vestibule wall

–the dozens of transistor radios — silver, aqua, cherry red, as the fashions changed — that I used to listen to Ernie Harwell

–the high school Dad’s Club dads, who always managed to snag a dozen of these baseballs to raffle off on new parent night, gladhanders my dad never could stand

–my mother, who pushed my dad constantly to take me downtown to a ballgame

–my dad, who only very late in his life finally told me he much preferred basketball over baseball

–Willie Horton, “Willie the Wonder,” always my favorite player, home-grown

–and Jim Ray, signing right next to Willie, about whom I remember absolutely nothing.