Schanz boys get to the ballpark

Baseball is an old-timers’ game.
It is called “America’s Pastime” for a reason.
Decades ago, fathers took their young boys to the ball game. It was roughly three hours or so of father-son bonding time, during which the elder passed on stories of his father taking him to ball games.
It is a tradition often passed down from one generation to the next.
Wednesday, that torch was officially passed on to me and my brothers.
For the first time in my life, my dad, my two brothers and I attended a ball game together.
It was an event that nearly didn’t happen.
In 2004, my oldest brother Ben packed his bags and moved to Florida. He was 27, my other brother, John, was 24, and I was 18 and a few months into my freshman year of college.
In his absence, I attended a couple Detroit Tigers baseball games with John, but never my dad.
Ben attended a few games in Miami, and he was even able to catch the Tigers when they were in town. I had visited him a few times during spring break, but we never got the chance to catch a ball game together.
As a child, I had never been to Tiger Stadium, the former home of the Detroit Tigers. My father never went either. The last professional baseball game he attended — he went to nearly all of our Little League games when we were younger — was decades ago when he lived in New Jersey and watched the Philadelphia Phillies.
Comerica Park, the current home of the Tigers, opened in 2000, and the only time Ben had gone to the stadium was for a concert.
We never thought we’d all get the chance to catch a ball game together; a father and his three sons at the ballpark, watching a game all four of us grew up playing and still love to this day.
And when I moved to Jay County — my three-year anniversary is Friday — the chances of the Schanz boys attending a game together were about as equal as one of the four of us making the big leagues.
But last summer the stars began to align.
Ben and his wife moved back to my hometown of Saginaw.
With my parents and John still in the area, that left just me living out of state, albeit a short four-hour drive away.
Then, a few months ago, I got a phone call from John.
He got the ball rolling to get the four of us together.
We had our work cut out for us, though.
As an EMT, John’s work schedule is not necessarily normal. He has Mondays and Wednesdays off, and works every Friday and every other weekend.
So it took some planning. He had to have the right days off, and I was going to have to be able to be on vacation as well.
We settled on a date.
Then we had to find tickets, which was going to be a difficult task. My father can’t be in the sun for extended periods of time, and with an afternoon game there was a chance finding solace from the sun would be difficult.
But he said he’d manage.
We settled on a location — first base side so the sun is above us and sets to our backs, midway between the infield and the outfield fence. John and I were going to split the cost as our gift to Dad for Father’s Day.
After some further research, I came up with a novel idea — buy better seats, not tell either of them about it and then front the bill myself. My treat for the things the three of them had done for me to help me get this point in my life.
It would be a small price to pay to get a father and his three sons together for a baseball game.
We ended up behind the visitors’ dugout — still on the first-base side -- 29 rows from the field. We had a clear shot down the third base line, full view of the field and weren’t shielded by the protective netting.
And the weather could not have been any better. The sky was a perfect shade of blue without a trace of clouds. A welcoming breeze visited every so often, giving us a break from the beating sun. The first-pitch temperature was 72 degrees and it climbed to 79 degrees but not much higher.
The hometown Tigers won 10-3 for a two-game sweep of the Miami Marlins. Detroit smacked 15 hits, treating the Schanz boys and the 30,000-plus other fans in attendance to a four-run first inning. Miami cut the deficit in half in the top of the second, but Detroit responded by later hitting three home runs — a 451-foot shot to left-center field from Miguel Cabrera, then back-to-back jacks from Steven Moya and Jarrod Saltalamacchia.
Daniel Norris got his first win of the season, striking out a career-high eight batters. Alex Wilson and Kyle Ryan pitched well in relief before former starter Anibal Sanchez had a clean ninth inning for the hold.
The play on the field, the weather and the joy of sitting next to my dad and brothers at the ballpark made for a perfect Wednesday afternoon.
All the while, myself, John, Ben and dad had an experience that was 30 years, eight months and 14 days in the making.