Making Old New Again

We all have memories we would like to re-live and some we would just as soon forget. They exist,  good or bad, to remind us of what makes us happy and what not to repeat again.

Thomas Jefferson, who seemed to speak as if he knew he would be quoted forever, said "I like the dream of the future better than the history of the past." For me this journey that I have started is my dream, feeling better, looking better and just adding years to my life so that I can create new memories that include my family and my grandchildren.

But the history of my past is what is motivating me, so sorry Mr Jefferson, but I need to dwell in the past once in awhile. First of all the weight I had reached would have been a bowling average to be envied. Slowly, almost too slowly, the pounds are falling and that will be a past I hope to never repeat.

This week also rekindled a memory I hold dear and would love to repeat again with one of my grandkids. It was a day that my son Kyle and I will treasure.

Kyle and I have a shared passion, sports. There is little we are able to talk about beyond that, although he and his Mom can find a multitude of topics to talk about into the wee hours of the night. I guess he just plays to my strengths. Part of that passion is our love of stadiums, preferably the old but the new have their advantages. I went so far as to plan a weeks journey for he and I that would have taken us from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia to Washington DC, then on to Baltimore, New York and ending up in Boston, seeing a baseball game in the stadiums of those cities, all new except for the finale at Fenway Park.  This trip has moved to the bucket list and each season I check the schedules to see if its possible.

We did see a game at Wrigley Field and experienced a Monday Night Football game at Lambeau Field, but one stadium is just a little more special, mainly because it no longer stands.

1999 was the final season for Tiger Stadium in Detroit, a stadium that had seen better days, but still held on to a part of baseball history. I had never seen the stadium and I wanted Kyle and I to experience an old baseball stadium together and this was the closest to home. It was a Friday night game with the Boston Red Sox near the end of July and we had bought tickets in the lower deck in the right field corner.

We arrived in Detroit and the stadium in the early afternoon. Lunch was on the agenda and keeping with the nostalgia of the day, Kyle picked Casey's Pub a neighborhood bar two clocks from the stadium, because they had a sign that said "Great Cheeseburgers." So Casey's it was. Besides the locals who had their places at the bar, there were a few tables and we chose our seats and ordered our cheeseburgers.

At the next table was an older couple who quickly struck up a conversation with us, probably to find out why a grown man brought a 13 year old boy into a bar on Michigan Avenue in the middle of the afternoon. It turned out, they were there  for the same reason as Kyle and I, killing time before the baseball game. But they came to Tiger Stadium for a different reason, to see their beloved Red Sox. They were Fenway Park season ticker holders, had been for years, so they had prime tickets for every Red Sox game. We spent the afternoon experiencing Fenway through their eyes and memories but this was just the beginning of a day that could never be repeated.

We departed Casey's and our new friends to catch the tour of Tiger Stadium, seeing Ernie Harwell's tiny broadcast booth that seemed to hang directly over home plate and the famous in play flag pole in center field. This stadium, although it had a death sentence at the end of the season, was quickly becoming a new friend.

As we waited at the corner of Trumbell and Michigan for the gates to open we once again met our new friends from Boston. They just happened to have two extra tickets to the game. We had ours but their's offered bit of a different view, 6 rows behind the Tigers dugout. They were ours as long as I promised not to sell them.

I don't have words that have not already beed used by much better writers than I to describe that night and what we got to see but they are images that have a special place in my own gallery of memories.

This week I returned to "The Corner" where the stadium once stood. All that remains is the field that is maintained not by experienced grounds crews, but volunteers who trespass with their lawnmowers to keep the heart of this otherwise vacant lot beating. The famous flagpole still stands in what used to be center field with the 1984 World Series Banner flying proudly. Beyond that you have to draw on experience and memories to appreciate what was once there. Even with just our one game experience, it is a bit emotional to stand there looking through the fence and wishing once again you could go back in time and witness a small piece of baseball history.

These are the dreams I hold for the future with my grandkids, that together,  we will share an interest and find a way to experience it in person, whether it's a book, a place, the arts or sports, I want to give to them the gift Kyle and I received that July day in 1999, a day that will live as long as we do, if only in our memories.

As far as the Journey to a better me, there has been weight loss and I am adapting to life without potato chips and bread and pasta. Eventually some of that will creep back into my diet, but not until I adapt to portion controls and more of this extra Matt is lost. I attempted to take what is called a "recreational" walk but found that muscles need activity, regularly or they revolt in order to teach you a lesson. Mine began their own revolution against me just 4 blocks from our house,  which as I turned to return to,  seemed to have move to the next county in distance. But I huffed and puffed my way back those 4 blocks and wondered what have I done. I know it's baby steps and months from now I will wonder why I didn't do it sooner. It's too early for this life to become a vacant lot so the rebuilding continues and each day new improvements will lead to a smaller but better me, which sad to say is the way of new baseball stadiums.