My ability to follow the Detroit Tigers has changed dramatically over 65 seasons. It once was a lonely pursuit of looking at box scores and is now a 24–7 passion in full color on TV chatting in real time with other people.
Never living in Detroit itself, I originally settled for box scores in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette newspaper, a subscription to the Sporting News, maybe a dozen TV broadcasts on a Fort Wayne, IN station, and of course, the daily blessing of listening to Ernie Harwell. Yearly Sporting News baseball registers were a big deal too.
As a kid my room was covered with cheaply printed black and white glossy photos of the early 60s team, and I could’ve been mistaken for a religious zealot with a wall full of icons of various saints singing with mysterious allure.
I was also the only person I knew who had a passion for the Tigers. So it was a somewhat lonely pursuit. Such as having arcane hobby like collecting bugs. I was never enculturated in a vibrant, local tradition like most of you.
After the amazing joy of the 1968 season and getting older, I pretty much stopped paying attention, especially when I moved to Tucson, Arizona then Boise, Idaho. I busied myself with the life of a young man. Spent every weekend in the mountains walking through carpets of flowers and enjoying the other worldly solitude of the desert.
My general disinterest was only interrupted in 1984 when a group of Detroiters moved to Tucson, Arizona, and I fell in with them and for the first time in my life, I was not a lonely bug collector, but a fellow member of a religious cult and a part of a lineage, where a passion for the Tigers is passed down from generation to generation.
In 2004 thanks to the Internet I discovered this site and it’s really great to feel included in something broader which was once a lonely, personal pursuit. It’s really a joy to share these last 100+ games with you.