A season for souvenirs: Chet Lemon’s home run ball and dirt are prized possessions

When I was a kid, there was nothing more thrilling than popping out of the tunnels at old Tiger Stadium and seeing that lush green expanse of the outfield. The raked brown dirt of the infield always looked so perfect.
Nothing could be made better.
While the game is always fun to watch, everything that goes along with the spectacle of a ball game has always fascinated me.
The uniforms, the bats, the helmets, the grass and, yes, the balls.
And if you’re lucky enough, you might just get to take home a souvenir at the end of a season.
Yes, I’m talking about the home run ball.
What is it about the stuff the pros use that make you quiver when you touch it?
They somehow make you feel bigger.
Touch the ball that the pros touch and you could absorb some of their talent.
My family first acquired a piece of Detroit Tiger history in the 1980s. I can’t remember who the Tigers were playing, or if it was before or after the biggest season. It was one of those seemingly meaningless, mid-summer games. We were, of course, sitting in the cheap seats. We were always Bleacher Creatures when we went to games. I still remember the metal benches with the numbers painted on them in between the white lines marking your ‘seat’ on the bench. It always seemed rather silly to me as a kid -- there was nothing there to stop you from sliding over into another seat.
The beach balls bounced around. The Wave was always thrilling.
It was an exciting game, too. This was the team that won it all in 1984: Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell and Jack Morris. And, of course, Chet Lemon.
Chet took the plate. The crack of the bat sounded all the way up to where we sat.
You forget how large everything seemed when you were a kid. Our entire section leapt up in one motion, like they were not individuals, but one giant hand. I couldn’t see squat because I was still so short. I did stand up on my bench, but it was too late.
I could tell from the way everyone’s heads craned that the ball was coming right at us. It sailed overhead and landed a few rows up.
A guy put his bare hand out like a mitt and the ball smacked into it.
He winced with pain.
It was too fast. The guy couldn’t hang on to it and the ball came rolling down underneath the benches until it stopped.
Right between my mom’s feet.
It was just sitting there. All my mom had to do was reach down and pluck it up. She raised the ball so everyone could see the gift she got from Chet Lemon, who was no doubt trotting past second base by now, on his way to home plate.
Catching a foul ball is nice. But catching a home run ball is better.
The ball held a prominent position sitting in the mouth of an old Detroit Free Press mug featuring a graphic from the front page of the newspaper when the Tigers won in 1968. The ball survived for years in that mug on a table in my parents’ house until our fractious English Setter, Maggie, got a hold of it and chewed it up.
My folks still have the chewed-up version, though. It’s a home run ball, after all. A ball the pros used.
Tiger Stadium itself was a very large souvenir, one that sadly couldn’t be saved.
I loved the old stadium. The only thing I don’t miss are the bathrooms with the long tubs I could never quite reach as a kid. My old man would hoist me up by my armpits so I was level with the beer-logged gents next to me, cigarettes dangling out of their mouths. (This was the early 1980s, when you could still smoke just about everywhere).
“What you lookin’ at, kid?” they seemed to say if I ever locked eyes with them.
My brother and I attended the last game at Tiger Stadium in 1999.
The outcome didn’t matter (though the Tigers won 8-2). This was about history.
When the game was over, we went down to the right-field fence where one of the stadium workers was dipping the little plastic commemorative ticket holders into the dirt and giving them to fans.
My brother and I, of course, both got our plastic ticket holders filled with the warning track dirt.
My souvenir has survived for ten years and still hangs on a place of honor in my office.
The same dirt that got stuck between the cleats of the pros.