Having a Catch (Glory Days)

You don't see a lot of dad's playing catch with their sons anymore!

The year must have been about 1973 or 1974 because the kid in the picture looks pretty darn young. Dad and Ricky are playing catch at Grandpa and Grandma Morgan's house in Clarkston, Michigan. It must have been inevitable that I would grow up loving baseball because there are pictures of me at just a couple months old in a baseball outfit; in a picture in Holly, Mich., I'm wearing (gasp!) a Cincinnati Reds hat ...

In about '76, we went with our friends to a double header on one of my buddie's summer birthday. Now, for five–year–old Ricky, a double header must have been analogous to a root canal because I HATED IT! Going to Tiger Stadium and watching baseball didn't rank nearly as high at watching Batman, Ultraman, and the Brady Bunch on Channel 20 after school. Now, that was fun! Things changed during that summer of '76, though, and it wasn't because of the country's grand celebration ...

No, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych was lighting up the city of Detroit and the national baseball landscape. He was something else. Heck, the Oakland Press released an edition with an iron on of The Bird. I had Bird shirts and all kinds of other bird memorabilia. Joe Falls, late sports editor for the Detroit News, even got me an official American League baseball with Fidrych's autograph. The summer of '76 changed things. I have to be honest, though, the team that turned me on to baseball was the '79 Pittsburgh Pirates with their stove–pipe hats ...

It was '81 when I became a die–hard Tiger fan. I remember crying on the last day of the season when Rollie Fingers saved a game for the Milwaukee Brewers and knocked the Tigers out of the running for the playoffs.


From what I remember, and realize, I was only four in 1976, but the Bird shined on Monday Night Baseball (where'd ABC get that idea, anyway?) and captured America's heart. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated with, get this, a six–foot pigeon or something like that! Of course, that Sesame Street tie–in helped to lure me into baseball!