Thirty-four Years Ago Today (or Tomorrow, but Probably Today)

It has long been a tale of family lore: Billy's first major league baseball game.

Earlier this month, I attended a wild one at Yankee Stadium (Yankees 14, Angels 9 - read about it here.)

The historical nature of the game (most likely my last one at the "old" Yankee stadium) got me a thinking, especially with my daughters in tow. So I hopped on the web and did a little research.

But before I continue, a generous cousin took Shayna and me to another wild one this past Sunday (Yankees 15, Royals 6) and we had completely awesome seats, so this past Sunday was my last game at the old Yankee Stadium (recap here).

Now, scroll back to another time: I was 7 years old and visiting my dear young dad (who would some day become The Ancient One, Blessed Be He). We had taken a break from summer in Springfield, Illinois, and were visiting my Grandma Martha Cohen in Southern California. We went to an Angels-Tigers game at "The Big A," the original stadium for the team then known as the California Angels.

Here's what I remember: it was a pitcher's duel, the stuff that excites grown-ups but bores little seven-year old boys. The game ended 1-0. The collective memory of me and my pops had the Tigers losing 1-0. Or maybe winning 1-0. I also remember a line drive foul ball coming right toward me at a million miles an hour, but somehow being miraculously diverted into the loge section above us Or we may have been in loge and it could have been an upper deck. Mickey Lolich pitched for the Tigers. Frank Tanana for the Angels. Or so we thought.

Fresh from the euphoria of the Angels loss at the hands of the Bronx Bombers, I went a digging in the cyber-archives.

Amazing what you find on line! There it is: Monday, August 19, 1974. Angels 1, Tigers 0. Winning pitcher: Frank Tanana. Losing pitcher: Fred Holdsworth? What?

And then you look at the play-by-play: a pitcher's gem indeed. The game ended in the bottom of the ninth after a lead-off single, a sacrifice, an intentional walk, a passed ball (moving both runners into scoring position, and then another intentional walk to load the bases, and then pinch runner Mickey Rivers scored on a sacrifice fly by pinch hitter Winston Llenas.

Game summary here.

But I am more impressed by who else I saw play that night...

For the Tigers, Al Kaline, Ron LeFlore, and the original third baseman named A-Rod, Aurelio Rodriguez (name the baseball player with all five vowels in his first name). Sad news, I just learned he died in 2000.

For the Angels, Denny Doyle, Bruce Bochte, Bobby Valentine and Frank Robinson.

But I had swore we saw Lolich pitch for Detroit. But I was more certain Tanana was there.

The next night, however, was more memorable. Maybe I saw that game instead?

It was Lolich. Against Nolan Ryan. Detroit won 1-0. Both pitchers went all 11 innings. And Ryan struck out 19 batters. And lost. Can you imagine?

No, it had to be the Tanana game. I would have remembered Ryan and 19 K's. Check out this box.

I called my father. He believes we saw Lolich-Ryan, but that it wasn't extra innings. I remember Tanana. But I was 7 and he was 37. Whose memory is more reliable? I can't imagine dear old dad having such a great month that both Nixon resigned and the Tigers won a game, despite fanning
nineteen times.

Of course, once he reads this, he'll remember who else was there and start making some phone calls. Or maybe he won't.

To you, Dad, I issue this challenge....tell us once and for all which game it was.....

Tenth Anniversary: Shayna's First Photo

Today is the 10th anniversary of my younger daughter Shayna's first photograph. I thought I'd share our first vision with the world:




Incidentally, Shayna finished off her summer baseball season yesterday. Here's her penultimate at-bat which was one of her best of the season. She was eventually out at first, but she really made the pitcher work. I'm sure, just as interesting, are the reactions of the photographer and the nearby spectators from her family. She also caught a fly ball at second base for her second unassisted putout of the year.

BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #21 ("They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine)

Philip Levine is an award-winning poet who has written amazing poetry about gritty, blue-collar life, growing up and coming of age in Detroit, Michigan. By the flimsiest of correlations, as the child of a Detroit-born father, who went to the same high school as Levine (Central), but missed him by a few years (although I believe he was in the same class as my Aunt Bobby), the beloved Detroit Tigers won their first game of the season last night in Boston, after a week and a half of winless futility.

What a mess that sentence was!

The point is, Tigers won, here's a Detroit poet, with a Detroit poem. This is one of Levine's finest, which I have heard him read at least once, at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival in 2004. At the end of the poem you'll find a link to listen to it as well.

They Feed They Lion

By Philip Levine

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.

Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of the bones' need to sharpen and the muscles' to stretch,
They Lion grow.

Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
"Come home, Come home!" From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.

From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower
Of the hams the thorax of caves,
From "Bow Down" come "Rise Up,"
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,
The grained arm that pulls the hands,
They Lion grow.

From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.

Listen: "They Feed They Lion" (mp3)

Incidentally, I spoke to Levine about the family connection. He did not know/remember my Aunt, but he did know who my grandfather, William Cohen, the man for whom I was named, was. It was certainly an inspiring moment, to have a Pulitzer Prize winning poet acknowledge the connection to a man who (and I am certainly understating this) was a public figure in Detroit in the middle of the last century as an attorney who championed the causes of the working men and women of Hamtramck.

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok