Then I picked up the newspaper Sunday morning. There it was above the fold on page one, just like it had unfolded in my state of slack-jaw sickness — Tigers 8, Yankees 3. Somewhere the Babe was crying in his beer. I took my temperature again and waited for Rod Serling to step out from the Twilight Zone of playoff baseball.
Now there are a few constants that I have come to lean on — almost in a crutch-like manner by my wife's account — when writing this column. Every year I have to work in a comment about Toughskin jeans, eating Play-Doh or red dye #3, and the Detroit Tigers being mathematically eliminated from the World Series by April. I always figured a controversial food additive had a better chance at a come back than the Tigers.
Holy Willie Hernandez! They're still playing baseball in Michigan — and it's October.
It was a 102.8 degree thermometer reading, not baseball fever, that turned me into a baked couch potato. In fact, I had not tuned into a Tigers' game since the Bush administration — the G.H.W. 1.0 version. Admittedly, I slipped in and out of consciousness for the first three or four innings.
So I figured it was an 800 milligram ibuprofen induced out-of-body experience that made me think the boys wearing the Old English D were up 7-0 to the pretentious pinstripes from New York City. However it did make me sit up and take notice; even though my eyeballs were rolling over like a Jeremy Bonderman slider. Then a ground ball whimper from the money-can't-always-buy-you-post season-happiness George Steinbrenner machine, three outs, and a pandemonium of joy last heard at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull.
After confirmation from three credible news sources that this historical moment didn't just happen in my blinded by fever mind's eye, I decided it was safe to dig up the past. Inside a banana box of childhood mementos I found it; beneath the Star Wars action figures and Matchbox cars — a 1984 World Series program. Suddenly I'm 14 years old again, staring at the glossy faces of Lance Parrish, Dan Petry, Milt Wilcox, Alan Trammel, Kirk Gibson, Larry Herndon, Tom Brookens, Lou Whitaker and Aurelio Lopez. I had forgotten how a Tom Selleck mustache — much like an athletic cup — was required equipment.
As I turned the program pages, Ernie Harwell's voice drifted out of my grandfather's tool shed. It seemed no matter what time of day when you flipped the light switch, the little am/fm radio on the same circuit would pop to life with the Voice of the Tigers putting adjectives on a Jack Morris fastball. However, if it was around noon then it was the over-enunciation of Paul Harvey.
Will the 2006 Tigers take a page out of the 1984 World Series program? Unfortunately, through no fault of their own, they already have. In an article touting the start to finish runaway season of 1984, I came across this sentence: "Despite the economic upswing of the nation over the last couple of years, Detroit has still been mired in unemployment problems which have plagued the entire area for the last several years." Talk about Michigan history repeating itself.
Speaking of history, I also came across ads in the '84 program for TWA bargain price business class seats, Polaroid 35 mm slide film and the "RevoluntionAries" Dodge K-car.
As I poked around the memento box further, I also unearthed a special section from the Detroit News dated Tuesday, Oct. 16, 1984. There, nearly large as life, was then two year old Kevin Du Mouchelle sitting on his father's shoulders in the center-field bleacher seats at Tiger Stadium. Looming behind them in the photo is a scoreboard lit up with the words Detroit Tigers: 1984 World Champs. Twenty-two years ago these words had been thought but never uttered in a declarative sentence since 1968. I'm sure they are once again poised on a few thousands lips.
Kevin Du Mouchelle would be 24 years old now. He was too young to have his hopes dashed in 1987, but I'm sure he's known disappointment in the box scores ever since. Perhaps he can look to the yellowed edges and faded newsprint and believe again like a child up way past his bedtime. Myself, I might be suffering from lingering delusions of feverish grandeur, but this could be the year the roar is restored.
As for the Detroit Lions, that is a dull pain no amount of time or over-the-counter medications can cure.
Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or email gleiva@gtherald.com.