And on the seventh day, they played baseball.I think it was baseball.It wasn't Tigers baseball. Not the brand we'd gotten used to in this postseason. It was more like a badly cracked egg: first the yoke broke and soon pieces of shell were floating everywhere. Home runs were surrendered. Errors were made. Balls went flying where they weren't supposed to go flying. And the Detroit bats - swinging too often at first pitches - were all but silent.
Somewhere, as you read this, cables are being laid and cameras are being hoisted. Somewhere, as you read this, tickets are being enveloped or moved across cyberspace. Somewhere, as you read this, a field is being groomed, logos are being repainted, and merchandise is being unpacked and displayed, caps and shirts and jackets with official tags emblazoned with a single phrase that pulls this crazy movable feast from one October to the next:World Series.In Detroit?To paraphrase "Field Of Dreams," if you wait long enough, it will come.
I once heard Paul McCartney asked what, for him, was the best time in the Beatles? He said just before they made it big, when everything was on the horizon, when they knew it was coming, but it hadn't happened yet.The Detroit Tigers are in that sweet spot right now. And they - and the fans - should savor every minute of it.
The day began with the feel of something big. People sipped their morning coffee thinking baseball, and they dressed in layers thinking baseball, and they came to the stadium on this October afternoon thinking baseball, baseball, baseball. It was football chilly, it was Hockeytown, but the ball and the bat ruled the day, in a way the ball and bat have not ruled this city in more than 20 years. It felt like destiny, like something special was going to happen.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
