From the time I could put on my brand new Don Demeter autographed glove, I knew baseball was my favorite sport to play. \u00a0My father bought that glove for me in around \u201868 for little league and I used the same glove all the way through high school baseball. \u00a0I still have it to this day preserved in the bear grease I rubbed on it to keep it pliable. \u00a0I often wonder how many remember that Demeter played briefly for the Detroit Tigers in the sixties. \u00a0When I now think back about it, how odd it was to later work part-time for the very woman in her garage, who solely distributed in the US the bear grease my father purchased from Kmart to help keep his work boots from getting to wet.<\/p>\n
Playing baseball as a shy child was my savior so to speak. \u00a0It over the years helped to bring me out of my shell and become the person, I am today. \u00a0I have often argued with others that baseball compared to all other team sports is the hardiest game to play. \u00a0Though I guess for now, I\u2019ll leave that as a topic to be written about more fully on another day. \u00a0The playing of baseball as a kid in little league and then on school teams in the little one traffic light town called Freeland I grew up in was a big deal. \u00a0If you played it, everyone from child to adult knew who you were and kept track of how well you played. \u00a0 As I recall, I can remember while playing baseball in high school, kids that were four or five grades younger than me, would say hello to me and then giving me that game well done acknowledgment. \u00a0Those who became some of my best childhood friends played the game of baseball with me or on teams against me. \u00a0It was this social bonding component that is the game’s most powerful force of all. \u00a0Is to me, why baseball at that time was in America the true national game and social pastime.<\/p>\n
Back in the year of \u201868 the little league teams of Freeland, MI were blessed to go to a baseball game at Tiger stadium in Detroit, MI. \u00a0As our bus drove by certain areas in Detroit, there were ample signs of the riots of \u201867 that has left an everlasting impression on this person\u2019s empathic heart and mind. \u00a0As an eleven year old kid, who loved to play the game and watch the Tigers like Kaline, Stanley, Northrup, Horton, Cash, McAuliffe, Oyler, Wert, Freehan, Lolich, McClain and Brown play, the happenings of that era took time for me to comprehend. \u00a0Of course we all had fun that day sitting way out in the bleacher seats of the old Tiger stadium. \u00a0We took fully into memory all the sounds and the smells of the ballpark it had to offer us (My girlfriend and I went to the 11th to last game prior to the old Tiger stadium being closed in \u201899. \u00a0She and I wanted to experience once more those sounds and smells of our childhood days in the ballpark before being lost forever).<\/p>\n
Those of us who are ardent Detroit Tiger fans know how the \u201868 season ended. \u00a0My mother became way more than just my parent that year. \u00a0She became the coolest person in the world when she wrote a note to the school that I had a doctor\u2019s appointment. \u00a0She then came and picked me up from school, doing so, so I could go home and watch the Tigers play game seven and win the World Series. My mother is my hero in life, but I\u2019m starting to digress a little too much from the point I\u2019m trying to make about the social bonding component of baseball. \u00a0It was this game called baseball being played during the year of \u201968, out of the old Detroit Tiger stadium that as a social event morphed to become more than a game. \u00a0It, this playing of baseball became a force, a positive focus to start the process of healing among its fans. \u00a0The true national game and pastime showed why it was, yes by helping the people of Detroit and the rest of Michigan to come together and to act as one in support of a baseball team. \u00a0Through all this focus on the winning ways of a team working together on the field located at 2121 Trumbull Avenue, the social turmoil surrounding the \u201867 riots was for awhile at least set aside to let all the emotional unrest settle a bit. \u00a0The ills of the times were dampened just enough through distraction to allow the social bonding force of my favorite sport baseball to bring about and work its magic. \u00a0This is why I say baseball at that time was in America the true national game and social pastime. \u00a0However, time does change even the game of baseball. \u00a0What baseball was, the game back then to an eleven year old kid, isn’t what it has become, will be or how it’s perceived by others in America today. \u00a0Even so, I still have my fond memories to cherish of a game called baseball, I love to play.<\/p>\n
Words by \u00a0 ~Keith Alan Hamilton~<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the time I could put on my brand new Don Demeter autographed glove, I knew baseball was my favorite sport to play. \u00a0My father bought that glove for me in around \u201868 for little league and I used the same glove all the way through high school baseball. \u00a0I still have it to this … Continue reading “The true national game and pastime”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisstorytelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1589,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithalanhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}